If the jobs figures released by ADP today are any indication, then the BLS Job Survey that will be released Friday doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out to be very good:
The gloomy news continued for jobs as ADP reported Wednesday that private companies created just 119,000 new positions in April.
That was well below expectations and confirmation that the labor market is slowing heading into late spring and early summer.
Economists surveyed by Reuters expected the ADP report to show the private sector created 150,000 jobs in April, down from 158,000 in March.
“Nearly every industry has seen slower growth since the beginning of the year,” Moody’s economist Mark Zandi said on CNBC. “Smaller businesses are experiencing much weaker growth.”
Moody’s Analytics conducts the survey in conjunction with ADP.
The report comes two days before the government releases its nonfarm payrolls growth count for April. Economists recently have been nudging down their projections, which are pegged around 150,000 after March’s dismal 88,000 reading.
Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal comments:
The number is out and it’s weak.
Analysts were looking for 150K new private sector jobs.
Instead the number just came in at just 119K.
Remember, ADP just captures the private sector side of Non-Farm payrolls, so it’s not a perfect analogue for the official jobs report, which will come out on Friday.
That being said, over time the number is consistent with official numbers, and this number in particular is consistent with a lot of the weak data.
I’ve noted before that ADP’s numbers don’t always gel very well with the BLS numbers, but the general trends do end up coalescing over time, and right now both the BLS and ADP are showing a shrinking job market, a fact that the recent, mostly disappointing, GDP numbers only serve to reinforce. Prepare yourself for some less than encouraging news on Friday.
