Private payrolls growth was above the downwardly revised 142,000 the previous month and well ahead of the Dow Jones estimate for 133,000.
www.cnbc.com
That could either be somewhat positive news, or there could be a "twist"...
A couple things I noticed with the data they cite (as well as seeing what some of our clients and partner vendors did - many of whom use ADP, actually)
- The fastest job growth in April came in leisure and hospitality with a gain of 154,000, followed by education and health services (69,000) and construction (53,000).
- The financial sector lost 28,000 jobs for the month. Manufacturing also took a hit, losing 38,000 jobs.
If someone working in the financial sector or in manufacturing lost their job, and had to take a job at a hotel or restaurant (along with some other new hires), while the overall unemployment goes down, that still means some people are getting downgraded.
Another thing I've seen with some of our partner orgs and clients is the game where they'll layoff higher paid employees, and replace them with more warm bodies (but that get paid less).
Just as an example:
Laying off 6 Sr. App Devs who were making between $80-120k
Bringing in 8 Entry & Mid Level people making between $50-70k
...it sounds like they're adding more jobs than they're losing, but when you do the math, it's actually the companies trying to do a little creative cost cutting with the hopes that all the work will still get done.
I guess we'd probably need to see the granular data to know if it's really the rose colored glasses outlook, or if it's somewhat masking of the negative situation of people losing decent jobs, and having to take ones that pay less.
