ADP said the private sector shed a net 20k jobs in Feb, in line with consensus, but for a 2nd straight month the service sector added workers. This sector hired a net 17k (led by small and medium sized businesses as large co’s cut) but the good producing sector cut 37k. A bright spot though within the goods producing area was manufacturing which added 3k jobs, the first increase since Jan ’08. Construction fired a net 41k workers but was the smallest amount since July ’08. Financial services shed 6k jobs. With respect to the winter storms, ADP said “the adverse weather had only a very small effect on today’s ADP report due to the methodology used to construct it.” Friday’s government payroll figure calculation though will be depressed by the snow storms to a greater extent. Another differential between the two reports will be the temporary hiring of census workers which is not captured in today’s report but will in Friday’s release.
