Private sector adds at least 55,000 jobs in May; 10,000 fewer new jobless claims filed last week

The private sector added at least 55,000 jobs in May, offering an encouraging preview for tomorrow's government employment report. Also, the government said the number of new jobless claims filed last week dropped by 10,000. Both sets of data come from reports released moments ago.

ADP employer services also revised its April new-jobs estimate upward to 65,000 jobs, nearly double the report's original April estimate. With the May numbers, ADP reports four consecutive monthly gains of 39,000 jobs in the private sector. ADP gets its information from businesses.

The ADP report said the service sector added 78,000 jobs, the manufacturing sector added 15,000 jobs, but the goods-producing sector shed 23,000 jobs in May. Construction shed 41,000 jobs in May.

On unemployment, the government said the number of new jobless claims filed last week dropped 10,000 from the previous week to 453,000. The number of continuing claims, however, rose from 4.6 million to 4.63 million last week.

The four-week moving average of new claims, which smooths out volatility, rose by 1,750 to 459,000.

Though the drop in new claims is encouraging, the number of new weekly claims filed remains stubbornly stuck in the mid-400,000s. This is bad for the economy, because it's hard for meaningful new job growth to have an impact until the weekly loss rate of jobs falls down into the low-400,000s or upper-300,000s.

On Friday, the Labor Department releases the official May unemployment rate, which is expected to remain around 9.9 percent. However, forecasters are expecting that as many as 500,000 new jobs were added to the economy last month.

By Frank Ahrens | June 3, 2010; 8:55 AM ET

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