ADP-Moody's: U.S. added 2.4 million jobs in June

July 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. economy added 2.4 million jobs during the month of June, ADP and Moody's Analytics said in their monthly report Wednesday.

The firms said private payrolls grew by 2.37 million last month, just under the 2.5 million most analysts are predicting.

Small businesses led the gains, with 937,000. Those with fewer than 20 employees added 574,000 and companies with between 20 and 50 workers added 363,000.

Larger businesses, with 500 employees or more, added 873,000 jobs in June and those with more than 1,000 gained 772,000. Medium-size companies added 559,000.

"Small business hiring picked up in the month of June," Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement. "As the economy slowly continues to recover, we are seeing a significant rebound in industries that once experienced the greatest job losses.

"In fact, 70 percent of the jobs added [in June] were in the leisure and hospitality, trade and construction industries."

Leisure and hospitality added 961,000 jobs and construction accounted for 394,000. The trade/transportation/utilities sector added 288,000.

The companies/enterprises management sector lost 29,000 jobs last month and natural resources/mining shed 26,000.

ADP and Moody's also noted a significant revision to their May report -- changing an initially reported loss of 2.7 million jobs into a gain of nearly 3.1 million for the month.

"Our objective here is to predict the [Labor Department] number with the ADP data and to do that as accurately as possible," said Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi. "You can't glean from that that something positive is happening in the labor market."

The Labor Department will issue its June jobs report on Thursday, a day earlier than usual because Friday is a federal holiday. Last month, the department stunned Wall Street by reporting a growth of 2.5 million jobs for May when analysts were projecting a loss of between 7 and 8 million.