The US manufacturing sector lost 219,000 jobs in February, according to business outsourcing solutions firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP).
The total number of workers in goods-producing industries including manufacturers and construction companies to lose their jobs was 338,000 and this contributed to the loss of 697,000 jobs in the US as a whole during the second month of 2009.
The latter figure follows January’s cuts of 614,000, according to ADP’s data, which is sourced from pay-roll information from 400,000 businesses and 24 million workers.
Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist at Swiss Re in New York, told Reuters: “We are still sinking. There is no sign of a bottom.”
