Strong ADP Jobs Gain Needs Grain of Salt

From the Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics Blog:

A strong gain in a preliminary measure of private payrolls has raised hopes for the official Labor Department employment report to be released this Friday, but the numbers may be inflated by seasonal issues.

The U.S. added 325,000 private-sector jobs in December, according to a report by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing and consultancy firm Macroeconomic Advisers. The number was much better than economists were expecting, and added to hopes of a strong official Labor Department report on Friday.

But ADP has a mixed track record compared to the official Labor Department numbers, partly because of different methods for collecting data.

Last month, ADP reported that the private sector added 206,000 jobs, but the official number from the Labor Department was a more subdued 140,000.

And back in early July, ADP announced June payrolls had soared by 157,000 ... but the Labor Department reported ... 57,000 private jobs.
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Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/01/05/strong-adp-gain-needs-grain-of-salt/