The supposedly new and improved ADP employment report said private sector job gains in Nov totaled 118k, 7k less than expected and down from 157k in Oct. The hurricane though had a large influence on the number as ADP estimates that 86k were lost due to it with the manufacturing, retailing, leisure and hospitality and temp help industries most impacted. Manufacturing in particular shed 16k but on the other hand, construction jobs were up by 23k. In contrast to normal trends, large companies were the biggest incremental net employer on the month while small businesses were the smallest. Bottom line, taking out the influence of the hurricane saw a healthy increase of 204k jobs according to ADP’s estimates but the typical driver of net job gains, small and medium sized businesses were more reluctant than bigger one’s in adding labor costs. The hurricane impact will of course remain with us in reading the Nov data over the next month with the question for 2013 being how much activity we get back from the recovery/normality in the Northeast. The private sector job gain in Friday’s Payroll figure is expected to be 93k.
