"Economists are pessimists: they've predicted 8 of the last 3 depressions."
--Barry Asmus

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ADP Employment Report

Waiting for Friday's Employment Situation is kind of like waiting for Christmas when you're young.  The days drag out endlessly and you dream of what that special day will bring.  And then, when the day arrives, you rush to open your presents and sometimes you get exactly what you asked Santa for.
 
And sometimes you get an itchy and ill-fitting sweater.
 
The ADP Employment Report is an advent calendar window to the Employment Situation's Christmas.  It's a little teaser, that both soothes and stimulates the anticipation.  In March, that teasing bit of anticipation came in the form of 201,000 new private-sector non-farm jobs, 75.57% of which came from the service sector and 50.7% of which came from small businesses.
 
The April report is just not as happy.  The March employment figures were revised upwards to 207,000 new jobs (which is good), but April is only showing an additional 179,000 jobs.  77.09% of those jobs came from the service-providing sector, while 22.91% came from the goods-providing sector.  This marks the 16th consecutive month of employment gains for the service-providing sector and the 6th consecutive monthly gain for the goods providing sector.
 
6.14% of the new jobs came from large businesses, 46.92% came from medium-size businesses, and the remaining 49.94% came from small businesses[1].
 
[1]  Definitions:  A large business has 500+ workers.  A medium-size business has 50-499 workers, and a small business has less than 50 workers.

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