ADP Posts Blowout 253K New Jobs Ahead Of BLS Report

Thursday, June 1st, 2017

Automatic Data Processing (NASDAQ:ADP) , the private-sector payroll major, has released its monthly employment report ahead of the opening bell today, and the results surprised in a big way to the upside: 253K new private-sector jobs were created in the month of May, as opposed to a consensus estimate of 180K. April’s headline was adjusted downward slightly by 3000 new jobs to 174K.

Goods brought in 48K new jobs and Services had 205K; these are very consistent in the modern U.S. economy, in that services far outweigh product creation. However, the breakdown by industry has changed up somewhat this month: Leisure and Hospitality, one of the top job-makers month to month in 2017, actually lost 11K jobs in May, while Trade and Transportation led the way with 58K newly filled positions. Medium-sized companies brought in the most at 113K, compared to Small business’ 83K and Large firms’ 57K.

This ADP figure always reports ahead of the monthly non-farm payroll survey results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, where expectations are for 184K new jobs in May. With a very strong 253K number from ADP this morning, we may expect an upward revision overall before tomorrow’s market open. After all, as per Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi said on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning, this 253K figure is roughly 3x the rate of growth in the underlying labor force.

What this means is that fast-falling 4.4% unemployment number is likely to fall even further, to a percentage not seen in almost 50 years when the jobs market was far smaller than it is today. Considering how much automation is replacing job opportunities at a pretty fast clip, this is remarkably low unemployment. Add to this the skill-set deficit for many open jobs still unplaced, and what we’re seeing is a very strong U.S. labor market in 2017.

Of course, the BLS and ADP numbers don’t always correlate directly in real time; as revisions in subsequent months tend to moderate both figures closer toward each other, sometimes the Friday headline is far off the ADP number. We await the results ahead of the opening bell tomorrow.

Initial Jobless Claims

Elsewhere on the employment front, Initial Jobless Claims ratcheted up a bit week over week, to 248K from 235K the previous week (revised upward by 1000 claims from the initial headline). This remains within the long-term range of 225-250K, consistent again with a strong labor force, though up from the 230Ks we’d seen for roughly the past month. Continuing Claims fell again, from 1.924 million the previous week to 1.915 million last week. This again represents an historically strong jobs market in the U.S. currently.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

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