February 2018 ADP Job Growth Is 235,000 -

February 2018 ADP Job Growth Is 235,000

Mar 07, 2018Jeremy ParkinsonFinance0

ADP reported non-farm private jobs growth at 235,000.

Analyst Opinion of ADP Employment Situation

This month the rate of ADPs private employment year-over-year growth remained in the tight range seen over the last year.

ADP employment has not been a good predictor of BLS non-farm private job growth.

The market expected from Bloomberg / Econoday 172,000 to 223,000 (consensus 203,000) versus the 235,000 reported. These numbers are all seasonally adjusted;

In Econintersect‘s February 2018 economic forecast released in late January, we estimated non-farm private payroll growth at 160,000 (based on economic potential) and 160,000 (fudged based on current overrun / under-run of economic potential).

This month, ADP’s analysis is that small and medium-sized business created 70 % of all jobs [historically a relatively small percentage].

Manufacturing jobs grew 14,000.

84 % of the jobs growth came from the service sector.

The January ADP report (last month), which reported job gains of 234,000 was revised to 244,000

The three month rolling average of year-over-year job growth rate is 1.8 % (unchanged from last month)

ADP changed their methodology starting with their October 2012 report, and ADP’s real-time estimates are currently worse than the BLS.

Per Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics:

The job market juggernaut marches on. Given the strong January job gain, 2018 is on track to be the eighth consecutive year in which the economy creates over 2 million jobs. If it falls short, it is likely because businesses can’t find workers to fill all the open job positions.

Per Ahu Yildirmaz, VP, and head of the ADP Research Institute.

We’ve kicked off the year with another month of unyielding job gains. Service providers were firing on all cylinders, posting their strongest gain in more than a year. We also saw robust hiring from midsize and large companies, while job growth in smaller firms slowed slightly

Jobs growth of 150,000 or more is calculated by Econintersect to the minimum jobs growth to support population growth (see caveats below). The graph below shows ADP employment gains by month.