ADP Projects New Jobs Created Almost Twice That Expected

ADP’s most recent data shows that the private sector created a large number of jobs with a reading of +325,000 for the month.  This sailed far past the Dow Jones figure of +175,000 that the street was expecting.  The news may help to set a positive tempo for Friday’s key unemployment data with an expectation that the unemployment rate ticked back up to 8.7% from 8.6% in the prior month.  Many will also question the ADP data as being an outlier because it is close to twice what was expected.  Some of the skepticism will be due to that issue that the ADP reading often differs greatly from the Labor Department data on private sector non-farm payrolls.

ADP did revise the strong November figure slightly lower from a 206,000 to 204,000 but that is a smaller revision than what we usually see from the Labor Department.

JON C. OGG