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Friday, March 29, 2024

Anticipating the Employment Report for June

Courtesy of Doug Short.

The most important economic news this week is tomorrow’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, probably the most significant in the near term being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment (the PAYEMS series in the FRED repository).

Today we have a strange pair of June estimates: 281K new nonfarm private employment jobs from ADP and a much smaller 174K total new jobs from TrimTabs.

The ADP 281K estimate came in well above the Investing.com forecast of 200K for the ADP number.

The Investing.com forecast for forthcoming BLS report is 212 nonfarm new jobs (the actual PAYEMS number). The Briefing.com PAYEMS consensus is 210K new jobs and their own estimate is for a higher 230K.

Here is an excerpt from today’s ADP report:

“The June jobs number is a welcome boost,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP. “The number of construction jobs added was particularly encouraging, representing the highest total in that industry since February of 2006.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, “The job market is steadily improving. Job gains are broad based across all industries and company sizes. Judging from the job market, the economic recovery remains fully intact and is gaining momentum.”

Here is the press release from TrimTabs:

“The labor market was gradually improving earlier this year, but it lost a bit of steam in June,” said David Santschi, Chief Executive Officer of TrimTabs Investment Research. “Employment growth last month was the slowest since February.”

TrimTabs’ employment estimates are based on analysis of daily income tax deposits to the U.S. Treasury from the paychecks of the 139 million U.S. workers subject to withholding.

In a research note, TrimTabs explained that its estimate of job growth is consistent with a range of other indicators. Recent readings of the TrimTabs Macroeconomic Index are indicative of a slow to moderate expansion, the employment indices of the Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing Surveys are modestly in expansion territory, and unemployment claims data has been encouraging.

TrimTabs reported that wage and salary income increased 2.5% year-over-year in real terms in June, down from 3.4% y-o-y in April and 3.1% y-o-y in May.

“The pullback in income growth last month was modest and no reason for alarm,” said Santschi. “Real-time tax data indicates the economy is still growing at a moderate pace.”

Here is a visualization of the three series over the previous twelve months along with the latest ADP and TrimTabs estimates.

A key difference among the three is that the ADP and the BLS series, unlike the TrimTabs data, are subject to substantial revisions. Also, as I point out in the chart above, ADP tracks private employment, TrimTabs tracks all salaried US employees, and the BLS series is for Nonfarm Payrolls.

For a sense of the critical importance of nonfarm employment for the economy, see my Big Four Economic Indicators, which I will be updating shortly after the employment report is published.

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