ROSELAND, N.J. – May 1, 2013 – Private sector employment increased by 119,000 jobs from March to April, according to the April ADP National Employment Report®, which is produced by ADP® , a leading provider of human capital management solutions, in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics. The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The March report, which reported job gains of 158,000, was revised downward to 131,000 jobs.
Well now that's a nice miss!
The internals are ugly. Manufacturing lost 10,000 jobs -- the entire "gain" was in services. Best guess -- poorly-paying services too.
Supposedly trade/transportation/utility services had the biggest gains on the month, but that smells like 
to me, given what we have seen in the form of misses and slowing numbers from transportation-related companies.
My forecast for Friday is +100k, +/- 50 with a bias to the downside.
A five-figure print on Friday is odds-on, albeit not strongly-so.
In the week ending April 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 339,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 355,000. The 4-week moving average was 357,500, a decrease of 4,500 from the previous week's revised average of 362,000.
Hmmm..... that's a fairly material decrease. But is it real?
Let's look at the big table.
That's a fairly significant change..... and bears watching coming into next week's employment report.
In the week ending April 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 352,000, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 348,000. The 4-week moving average was 361,250, an increase of 2,750 from the previous week's revised average of 358,500.
...
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 354,973 in the week ending April 13, a decrease of 1,269 from the previous week. There were 370,482 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
Oh look, a roughly congruent number for actual claims and "adjusted" ones.
What does the big table look like? (Remember, this table is a couple of weeks behind)
Regular claims are down, which is good. EUC is probably roll-off, but you can't dispute the regular claims numbers. The problem with the figures is that the participation rate isn't moving, and it has to start.
Nonetheless this is a positive change in the big table albeit denoting more of a stabilization than anything else, despite the "initial claims" move upward this week. Concern is that we should be starting to see the spring/summer move south about now. I won't blow the whistle yet, but if in another month we don't see material improvement in these rates.....
In the week ending April 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 346,000, a decrease of 42,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 388,000.
...
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 353,973 in the week ending April 6, an increase of 37,025 from the previous week. There were 390,064 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
You have to chuckle at how the "seasonal adjustments" are made.....
But heh, it's "better than expected" -- right?
That's a nice divergence in the big table too...
All-in all I call this one neutral, but the market seems to think it's mildly positive.
Different strokes for different folks.
Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March (+88,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment grew in professional and business services and in health care but declined in retail trade.
This report sucks.
A month or two does not a trend make, but this, my friends, is a trend. Pay attention to the annualized (red line) number; this is no longer a "little dip" or a "pause", it's a trend change and it's severely negative.
If there's one good piece of news it's here -- the total number of employed people went up. The problem is that adjusted for population over the last year we are 1 million jobs in the hole, or about 250,000 worse than last month (-1105 .vs. -849, both thousands)
That shows up right here:
This chart tells the tale and is why the collapse was of such extraordinary violence in 2008 -- the alleged "gains" in asset prices and similar were not born from economic surplus powered by employment gains but rather were borrowed.
Despite what the screamers have said about "The Fed" and "Stock Market" the facts are that while the rate of decline has gone flat since the alleged "recovery" there has been no factual recovery.
The employment rate ticked up 0.1% but this is a time of the year when we should see upward movement -- and as such one cannot take solace in that figure. The fact of the matter is that real improvement in employment does not exist and has never existed since the bottom in 2009, despite what the useful idiots on the TeeVee have been telling you.
Average workweek ticked up 0.1 and hourly earnings ticked up one cent, but among non-supervisory employees hours were flat and earnings were down a penny.
The trend has clearly shifted and is just plain old-fashioned bad.
