U.S. Employment Numbers Down In July
ADP, a well-known provider of global Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, released their monthly National Employment Report, which showed a slight decline in July new hires. The report, calculated from ADP’s concurrent payroll data, periodically shows the change in total non-farm private sector job growth and is seasonally adjusted. Only 185,000 new positions were either created or filled during the month, with the Department of Labor scheduled to issue their monthly employment report Friday.
Professional and B2B service-related positions led the charge with 42,000 jobs, while utilities, trade, and transportation pulled in 25,000 new employees. For the month, July produced weaker numbers than industry analysts anticipated, although they pale in comparison to early 2015 when February and March employment numbers severely lagged.
Companies with larger than 500 employees added 64,000 new hires, nearly double June’s output. Enterprises with 1,000 or more employees added 47,000 jobs, gaining nearly 800 percent over the previous 6,000 created in June. Intuit, creator of QuickBooks and similar software suites, released their report, which aligned with ADP’s but added that businesses with fewer than 20 employees added a paltry 10,000 new positions last month. Given small businesses are still running 2.3 percent behind pre-recession numbers and construction is lagging 17.5 percent behind, anything added is something gained.
Experts predict Department of Labor’s employment report will reflect jobless claims hitting an unbelievable 42-month low. Although manufacturing has been a historic indicator of consumer sentiment and job growth, lagging production has contributed to fewer employment additions and an industry-wide slowdown in segments like retail. Even with these numbers, industry experts still believe the U.S. employment growth spurt has yet to reach fruition, but will soon.
One expert from Glassdoor, an online employment matching site, believes the DOL will show employment numbers below 200,000, although one sector not being factored into these figures is self-employment, such as freelancing or home-based business ownership. Another analyst predicts the DOL will state 225,000 new jobs were created, although the gas and oil sectors will probably pull those numbers much lower. Employment rates amongst young adults remained the same as June.
Moody’s Analytics, who also contributed to the ADP report, assists risk management professionals and global capital markets in responding to market confidence concerns. They’re best known for providing tools to help assess risk and employs roughly 10,000 worldwide. Both Moody’s and ADP frequently collaborate on reports to help professionals assess employment increases which, in turn, can help gauge consumer confidence in commerce. The August employment report by ADP will get released September 2.
[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]
