The U.S. lost 254,000 private-sector nonfarm jobs between August and September on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the national employment report released today by Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NYSE: ADP). In addition, the job loss from July to August was revised down to 277,000 from 298,000.

September's job loss was the smallest since July 2008, according to the report.

Service-sector employment fell by 103,000 in September, and employment in the goods-producing sector fell by 151,000.

Data in the ADP report is derived from an anonymous subset of roughly 500,000 U.S. business clients.