By Alan Rappeport in New York
Published: December 2 2009 14:12 | Last updated: December 2 2009 14:12
US companies cut 169,000 jobs last month as the pace of layoffs continued to abate slowly, figures showed on Wednesday.
Private companies have shed fewer jobs in each of the past eight months, according to a survey by ADP employer services, and last month marked the smallest number of cuts since July 2008.
Although the November figure was an improvement on October’s revised figure of 195,000, it was higher than economists had been expecting.
“Although overall economic activity is stabilising, employment usually trails economic activity, so it is likely to decline for at least a few more months,” ADP said in its report.
Employment in the services sector continues to be stubbornly high, with 81,000 jobs lost in the month. Companies that produce goods cut 88,000 jobs, but the decline in manufacturing employment was the smallest since May 2008.
The ADP survey comes ahead of Friday’s government non-farm payrolls report, which is expected to show that the US economy shed 123,000 jobs last month, leaving the unemployment rate at about 10.2 per cent. In the past two years, 7.3m Americans have lost their jobs.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/232b1276-df4b-11de-be8e-00144feab49a.html 
