The U.S. lost 33,000 private-sector nonfarm jobs in August, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the national employment report released today by Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NYSE: ADP). In addition, the report revised down the number of jobs gained in July to 1,000 from the original count of 9,000.

Although the service sector gained 45,000 jobs in August, the goods-producing sector lost 78,000.

"The decline in August continues the recent trend in employment that is consistent with an economy that is growing slowly but has not fallen into recession," according to the report.

The report is based on data from ADP derived from an anonymous subset of roughly 500,000 U.S. business clients.