ADP jobs #
ADP reports that the private sector shed 473k jobs in June, below expectations of a drop of 394k but is in line with the revised decline of 485k in May (from 532k). Small and medium sized businesses continue to lose the most amount of workers relative to large companies in both goods producing and service providing sectors. Construction employment fell by 97k and June was the 29th month in row of declines and has fallen 1.428mm from the peak in Jan ‘07. The financial services area cut 29k jobs, the 19th straight month of declines. Although the data is very helpful, the month to month relationship with the government payroll data has been sketchy as evidenced by the May data where ADP first reported a decline of 532k and two days later the government said payrolls fell by 345k. Thus, Friday still remains a crap shoot with current estimates at -363k with an unemployment rate of 9.6%.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:40 am
My wife and I had an interesting observation this past weekend. As usual on the weekend, we heard from several friends. In our circle of friends, we have at a catagory that can be referred to as blue collar labor workers without secondary education. (college, trade, etc) Then another catagory of friends are college educated. Over the weekend we heard from THREE different couples where the blue collar worker was losing their jobs within the month. Two of these were with long standing companies that are not scaling back, just shutting the doors completely. We also heard from three couples that are educated. They came by and was showing off their new vehicles they picked up Sat! While there are several points to be extracted from this, the biggest take away for me was that companies in my circle are starting to pick up on firing, not slowing down. Two months ago, we only knew two people that had been laid off. We now know 15.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:14 am
Rob, I’m curious how deep and vast these state budget cuts are going to be? Not only will they cut staff directly, but that loss of spenders to the economy could trigger another down cycle from the economy as a whole and thereby more private sector job losses.
I wonder how the recent college grads are doing these days?
July 1st, 2009 at 10:32 am
If my memry serves me correctly as of a few weeks ago the stats wouls have been last year 54% of graduating students had jobs. This year it’s 19%.
Pretty grim if true. What an economy to graduate into.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:25 am
Thanks, Alfred. I guess that means a lot are returning home to the parents after graduation. Even more stress for the apartment rental market.