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The dwindling number of people seeking unemployment benefits "is signaling further acceleration in payroll gains," Jim O'Sullivan, an economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients. Separately, the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said this month that service companies stepped up hiring last month. Service companies employ 90 percent of the U.S. workforce and range from the retail and construction industries to health care and financial services. Manufacturers also added jobs in August, the institute found, though at a slower pace than in July. In addition, the National Federation of Independent Business has said the percentage of small businesses that plan to add workers rose this month to the highest level since January 2007. The economy is growing steadily, though sluggishly. It expanded at a 2.5 percent annual pace from April to June, the government has estimated. That is up from a scant 1.1 percent annual rate from January through March. For the first six months of the year, the economy has grown at a rate of just 1.8 percent. Economists worry that growth is slowing to an annual rate of 2 percent or less in the current July-September quarter. If correct, that would mark the third quarter in the past four that the annual growth rate has fallen to 2 percent or below, an abnormally low level. About 3.9 million Americans received unemployment benefits in the week that ended Sept. 7, about 23,000 more than in the previous week. That total has fallen 32 percent in the past year. Some recipients likely found jobs, but many have used up all the unemployment benefits available to them.
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