U.S. private-sector franchise jobs increased by 12,050 during the month of February 2014, according to the ADP National Franchise Report. Broadly distributed to the public each month free of charge, the ADP National Franchise Report measures monthly changes in franchise employment derived from ADP’s actual transactional payroll data. The report is produced by ADP, a leading global provider of Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics, Inc. and is published by the ADP Research Institute.

“Franchises created 12,050 new jobs in February,” says Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and head of the ADP Research Institute. “For the second month in a row, restaurants continued to show considerably diminished growth, adding fewer jobs last month than the average monthly gain over the past eleven months. This may be attributable to the unusually harsh winter the U.S. has been experiencing. It is worth noting that combined, auto-related franchises, business services, and accommodations reflect more than half of the franchise jobs created this month.”