Private sector adds 130,000 jobs in Jan: report

By Chris Reese

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private employers added 130,000 jobs in January, about three times the number that economists had been expecting, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday.

ADP Employer Services, whose employment report was jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, also revised the number of jobs created in December down to 37,000 from the 40,000 initially reported.

The median of estimates from 23 economists surveyed by Reuters was for the ADP report to show 45,000 new private-sector jobs in January.

"It suggests that employment rebounded some in January," said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, adding "declining house prices and declining stock prices are factors that drag on consumption, but if employment and wages continue to grow it is unlikely that you would see an outright decline in consumer spending," Prakken said.

U.S. Treasury debt prices crept lower on Wednesday after the surprisingly robust private-sector employment report.

The higher-than-expected ADP numbers had some analysts upwardly revising their expectations for the U.S. government's report on January non-farm payrolls, to be released on Friday.

The median of forecasts from economists polled by Reuters is for non-farm payrolls to increase by 63,000 from a surprisingly weak rise of 18,000 in December.

"Adding the latest ADP survey data to our formulas raises our forecast for January payroll growth to 110,000, up from an earlier estimate of 25,000," said Brian Fabbri, managing director of economic research at BNP Paribas in New York.

The January increase was consistent with non-farm private employment growth averaging 110,000 in the three-month period from October through December, ADP said in a statement.

Employment in the services portion of the economy grew by 141,000 in January, while the number of jobs in the goods-producing sector fell by 11,000 for the fourteenth consecutive monthly decline, ADP said.

Manufacturing employment in January was flat after eighteen consecutive monthly declines.

Automatic Data Processing, based in Roseland, New Jersey, is a large payroll services company and the parent of ADP Employer Services. Macroeconomic Advisers LLC is based in St. Louis, Missouri. The ADP National Employment Report is released monthly.

(Reporting by Chris Reese; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)