WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Private-sector firms in the U.S. eliminated 169,000 jobs in November, according to the ADP employment report released Wednesday. It was the fewest jobs lost since July 2008. The private-sector has shed jobs for 23 months in a row. In October, a revised 195,000 jobs were lost compared with the 203,000 originally reported, ADP said. Goods-producing jobs fell by 88,000 in November, including 44,000 in manufacturing and 44,000 in construction. Services-producing jobs fell by 81,000. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-nov-private-sector-jobs-fall-169000-adp-2009-12-02
Why is this more than expected? Seems pretty clear we're headed for a positive print on the NFP number sometime in the 1st qtr of 2010. Edit: I see that the 'expected' number was 150K. I guess your headline is correct. Shockingly bad report.
You should feel better. The employment situation has pretty much stabilized and should see some improvement in 2010. I expect a year from now that the unemployment rate will have fallen back below 10%.
Government's "magic pencil" will somehow show we're returning to job growth, I'm sure. But we need to be adding about 160,000 jobs per month just to accommodate the new people coming of age to enter the work force... let alone the millions out of work. I can't even imagine what we could to bring productive employment back to former levels. Oh sure, the government can hire 16 million census collectors for a time in 2010... that would give the APPEARANCE of jobs... but they'd be the wrong kind. We need the ones which are "drivers of revenue"... not parasitic sappers of the public purse.
Not sure I can agree with this. While the job loss is slowing, hiring is not accelerating. First Quarter 2010? No way.
You need +100,000 just to keep up with demographic changes, in order to keep the unemployment rate flat.