Washington, Jun 4 (IANS): Private companies in the US added 978,000 jobs in May, which marked the biggest gain in 11 months and indicated a continued labour market recovery amid the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report.

The service-providing sectors added 850,000 jobs in May, the report released on Thursday by the payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) in collaboration with Moody's Analytics, said.

The leisure and hospitality sectors added 440,000 jobs, the education and health services sectors added 139,000, while the trade, transportation and utilities sectors added 118,000, Xinhua news agency quoted the report as saying.

The information sector, however, lost 3,000 jobs in the month, it added.

"Private payrolls showed a marked improvement from recent months and the strongest gain since the early days of the recovery," said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP.

Private companies added a revised 654,000 jobs in April.

"While goods producers grew at a steady pace, it is service providers that accounted for the lion's share of the gains, far outpacing the monthly average in the last six months," Richardson said.

Large firms and medium-sized businesses hired 308,000 and 338,000 workers, respectively, and small companies added 333,000 employees, the ADP report showed, indicating a balanced recovery across different company sizes.

Private companies in the US slashed roughly 20 million jobs in March and April last year due to the Covid shutdowns.

Amid reopening efforts, the private sector saw a revised job gain of over 3 million in May, followed by a revised growth of over 4 million in June.

After that, however, job growth has been slowing down.

In December 2020, the trend was even reversed, with private companies shedding a revised 75,000 jobs amid Covid spikes.

The ADP report came a day before the crucial monthly employment report released by the Department of Labour's Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will include employment data from both the private sector and the government.