Labor Market Booms in Donald Trump's First Month as Employers Add 298K Jobs

President Donald Trump's first full month in office coincided with a breakneck pace of job growth, according to a preliminary jobs report published Wednesday by the ADP Research Institute.

Domestic employers generated 298,000 new positions last month for the country's best pace of job gains since April 2014. Small and mid-sized businesses with fewer than 500 employees led gains, accounting for nearly 76 percent of the employment additions.

The service sector again drove the economy forward with 193,000 additions, but the real story came from the goods producing segment of the economy. Such employers accounted for 106,000 of last month's gains. Since May 2002, the earliest month for which such data is available, there has never been a better month for job creation for those who make things in America .

Construction outfits added 66,000 positions – their best performance since Feb. 2006. Natural resource and mining employers added 8,000 jobs – a level unmatched since Feb. 2012. And manufacturers created 32,000 new jobs for the sector's best showing since March 2012.

“February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years,” Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Gains were driven by a surge in the goods sector, while we also saw the information industry experience a notable increase."

Such a sterling report caught analysts off guard, as most were expecting gains somewhere around 190,000 – an undershot of more than 100,000 jobs.

January's numbers, meanwhile, were revised up to 261,000 additions from a previously reported 246,000, meaning ADP's job creation numbers have registered above 200,000 for four consecutive months and in seven of the past nine months.

"February was a very good month for workers. Powering job growth were the construction, mining and manufacturing industries. Unseasonably mild winter weather undoubtedly played a role," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said in a statement Wednesday. "But near record high job openings and record low layoffs underpin the entire job market."