U.S. private-sector employment experienced another sharp gain in March, generating more than 200,000 jobs and signaling the labor market is strengthening, said the National Employment Report released Wednesday.

The report, released by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), said that private sector added 209,000 jobs from February to March on a seasonally adjusted basis, better than experts' expectation. Estimated gains for the previous month were also revised higher by 14,000 to 230,000.

The small and medium businesses accounted for the majority of the employment gains last month, adding 187,000 jobs in total, while large businesses increased 22,000 jobs.

The employment in the service-providing sector rose by 164,000 in March after rising with a revised 183,000 in a month earlier, while jobs in the goods-producing sector added 45,000, according to the report.

Economists believe that further job gains will help sustain household spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. economy, as the labor market conditions continue to improve at a moderate pace.

In the past six months, the U.S. businesses added an average of 200,000 net jobs per month. But the job market has a long way to go before it fully recovers from the recession, and the current 8.3-percent unemployment is still painfully high.

The ADP National Employment Report is derived from actual payroll data and measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month.