ADP said private sector jobs were unexpectedly shed in March by 23k vs the consensus of a gain of 40k. Feb was revised down by 4k to a loss of 24k and ADP says specifically that because the Feb report “was not restrained” by weather, the March figure “does not incorporate a weather related rebound that could be present in this month’s BLS data.” While the service providing sector added 28k jobs, it was more than offset by a 51k decline in the goods producing sector, 9k of which was in manufacturing. Construction employment fell by 43k but was the smallest drop since July ’08. The financial services sector lost 8k jobs. Bottom line, today’s number will be cleaner than Friday’s Payroll figure in terms of not including the distortion of census worker additions and weather so while the labor market is getting better, the pace is slight.
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