First Look at August: ADP Says 428K Nonfarm Private Jobs Gained

The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment (the PAYEMS series in the FRED repository).

Today we have the ADP August estimate of 428K nonfarm private employment jobs gained, an increase over the ADP revised July figure of 212K.

The 428K estimate came in below the Investing.com consensus of 950K for the ADP number.

The Investing.com forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is for 1.265M private nonfarm jobs gained and the unemployment rate to drop to 9.8%. Their forecast for the June full nonfarm new jobs is (the PAYEMS number) 1.4M.

Here is an excerpt from today's ADP report press release:

“The August job postings demonstrate a slow recovery,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Job gains are minimal, and businesses across all sizes and sectors have yet to come close to their pre-COVID-19 employment levels.”

Here is a visualization of the two series over the previous twelve months.