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A now hiring sign is posted in the window of a CVS store in San Francisco, California.
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The numbers: U.S. companies added 365,000 jobs to their payrolls in October, Automatic Data Processing Inc. reported Wednesday. The gain was well below forecasts from economists surveyed by Econoday who expected a gain of 600,000 jobs.
In September, the private sector added a revised 753,000 jobs to their payrolls.
What happened: Small businesses added 114,000 jobs to their payrolls in October, ADP said. Medium-sized businesses added 135,000 and large companies added 116,000.
Manufacturing only added 7,000 jobs in October. The service producing sector had most of the gains, rising by 348,00 jobs.
Big picture: The ADP is an early look at the national labor market picture but the two reports have not been matching up very well during this recession.
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expect job gains to slow to a gain of 530,000 jobs in October, down from 661,000 in September. The unemployment rate is expected to fall to 7.6% from 7.9% in the prior month.
Behind the numbers, there are still about 10 million workers who are unemployed as a result of the pandemic.
Market reaction: U.S. stock futures were higher even as President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden were locked in a tight election race. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +2.06% was up 554 points on Tuesday.
