ADP payroll processing company reported Wednesday that companies created far fewer jobs in the continuing struggle to find employees for open positions.

Only 247,000 private payrolls increased for the month. That’s well under the Dow Jones 390,000 estimate. This was an enormous drop from March’s revised increase of 479,000.

The primary reason for this disappointment was a drop in hiring small businesses. Companies with less than 50 employees saw a decrease of 120,000. This was especially true for those who had fewer than twenty employees. They lost 96,000 workers in the same month.

Large businesses employing more than 500 people compensated some of the drop by adding 321,000.

With 77,000 additional jobs created, leisure and hospitality were the most popular industries.

This is breaking news. For more information, please check here.