US private sector cuts 157,000 jobs in Oct

NEW YORK: US private employers cut a larger-than-expected 157,000 jobs in October, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday.

ADP Employer Services also said it revised the number of jobs lost in September to 26,000 from the originally reported loss of 8,000. ADP said the private sector job losses in October were the highest since November 2002. The report comes ahead of Friday's key payrolls by the government, which is more comprehensive than the ADP data and is expected to show a drop of 200,000 in non-farm payrolls. Some are expecting an even bigger drop.

"The payroll number has been consistently weaker than ADP. We have a 250,000 decline for October payroll," said James O'Sullivan, economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. "Hopefully the absolute decline should bottom in the second quarter but there are a lot uncertainties."

On Wall Street, stock index futures added slightly to earlier losses. U.S. government bonds, which generally benefit from weak economic conditions, pared their earlier losses. Economists had expected the ADP report to show 100,000 private-sector jobs were lost in October, according to the median of forecasts in a Reuters poll. The 29 forecasts ranged from a drop of 210,000 to a decline of 50,000. The ADP Employer Services report was jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.