Private sector employment in the US increased by 202,000 jobs from November to December according to data released by ADP. 

American companies helped ramp up hiring in the final month of 2019, posting the biggest gain in eight months. The rise is boosted by a big gain in trade, transportation and utilities, professional and business services and construction, according to the report. But manufacturing employment fell by 7,000, more than erasing the modest gain for that sector in November.

Still, the total gain, as well as those for the goods-producing sector and dominant services firms, all posted their biggest increases since April 2019.

 "As 2019 came to a close, we saw expanded payrolls in December," said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. "The service providers posted the largest gain since April, driven mainly by professional and business services. Job creation was strong across companies of all sizes, led predominantly by midsized companies."

Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics, said, "Looking through the monthly vagaries of the data, job gains continue to moderate. Manufacturers, energy producers, and small companies have been shedding jobs. Unemployment is low, but will begin to rise if job growth slows much further."

The ADP National Employment Report is a monthly measure of the change in total U.S. nonfarm private employment derived from actual, anonymous payroll data of client companies served by ADP®, a leading provider of human capital management solutions.