Washington, Aug 6 (IANS): The job growth of the US private sector slowed down last month but upward trend remained, a media report citing a survey said on Thursday.

The private companies added 185,000 jobs in July, down from 229, 000 jobs in June, said the National Employment Report released jointly by Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Moody's Analytics, based on a monthly survey, Xinhua reported.

"July employment growth was slower than June, but is still in line with what we have seen since the first of the year," said Carlos Rodrguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP.

"Notably, large businesses with more than 500 employees had their strongest job gains since last December and were almost double the June number."

Small and medium-sized businesses accounted for most of the employment gains in the past month, adding 121,000 jobs, while large businesses with over 500 employees added 64,000 jobs, much higher than 34,000 in June, according to the report.

Employment in the service sector rose by 178,000 jobs in July, down from 216,000 in June. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector added 2,000 jobs much less than 9,000 in June.

"Layoffs in the energy industry and weaker job gains in manufacturing are behind the slowdown," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "Nonetheless, even at this slower pace of growth, the labour market is fast approaching full employment."

The ADP survey studied data from private businesses with more than 23 million workers on payrolls but excludes government job growth. The Labor Department will release its jobs report for July on Friday.

The Labor Department said earlier last month that the non-farm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in June, The unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent from 5.5 percent in May.