US private sector employment ticks up in March - ADP
Private sector employment in the US rose a touch more than expected in March, according to the latest data from ADP.
Employment increased by 455,000 from February, versus expectations for a 450,000 jump. Meanwhile, the total of jobs added in February was revised from 475,000 to 486,000.
Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees added 90,000 jobs, while medium businesses with between 50 and 499 employees added 188,000. Large businesses with more than 500 employees created 177,000 jobs.
The services sector added 377,000, while the goods-producing sector saw a 79,000 increase. Within services, leisure and hospitality saw the biggest jump at 161,000.
Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said: "Job growth was broad-based across sectors in March, contributing to the nearly 1.5 million jobs added for the first quarter in 2022.
"Businesses are hiring, specifically among the service providers which had the most ground to make up due to early pandemic losses. However, a tight labour supply remains an obstacle for continued growth in consumer-facing industries."
Andrew Hunter, senior US economist at Capital Economics, said: "The ADP report hasn’t proved a useful guide to the payrolls figures in recent months, but it does echo the fairly upbeat message from other indicators, including the employment indices from the latest activity surveys and the continued fall in initial jobless claims.
"That said, with GDP growth looking to have slowed to only about 1.5% annualised in the first quarter and signs that the upward trend in job postings has levelled off, we suspect employment growth will trend lower soon."
Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: "ADP is not a statistically significant indicator of the official payroll numbers when combined with the Homebase numbers. The latter are much weaker, and point to a zero print on Friday.
"That might sound like a big difference, but ADP has overstated the initial monthly private payroll number by more than 450K three times over the past year, in April, May and December. ADP’s estimate is generated by a model - it’s not just a count of employment at firms which use ADP’s payroll processing services - and it is as vulnerable to error as any other model, ours included."