The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment (the PAYEMS series in the FRED repository). Today we have the ADP October estimate of 235K new nonfarm private employment jobs, an increase over September’s 110K, which was a downward revision of 25K.
The 235K estimate came in above the Investing.com consensus of 200K for the ADP number.
The Investing.com forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is for 312K nonfarm new jobs (the actual PAYEMS number) and the unemployment rate to drop to 4.2%.
Here is an excerpt from today’s ADP report:
“The job market remains healthy and hiring bounced back with one of the best performances we’ve seen all year,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Although the service providing sector was hard hit last month due to the weather, we saw significant growth in professional services, especially in the higher paid professional technical jobs. Additionally, small businesses rebounded well from the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, posting very strong gains.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, “The job market rebounded strongly from the hit it took from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Resurgence in construction jobs shows the rebuilding is already in full swing. Looking through the hurricane-created volatility, job growth is robust.”
Here is a visualization of the two series over the previous twelve months.
The key difference between the two series is that the BLS series is for Nonfarm Payrolls while ADP tracks private employment.
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