Pace Of Private Sector Job Losses Continues To Slow In November

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Private sector employment continued to decrease in the month of November, according to a report released by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) on Wednesday, although the report showed a continued slowdown in the pace of job losses.

The report showed that non-farm private employment fell by 169,000 jobs in November following a revised decrease of 195,000 jobs in October. Economists had been expecting a decrease of about 150,000 jobs compared to the loss of 203,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month.

ADP noted that November was the eighth consecutive month during which the decline in employment was less than in the previous month. With the continued slowdown in the pace of job losses, the decrease in jobs in November was the smallest since July of 2008.

Since employment usually trails economic activity, however, ADP said employment is likely to decline for at least a few more months despite stabilization in overall economic activity.

The report showed that the continued drop in employment reflected job losses in both the service-providing sector and the goods-producing sector.

ADP said that service-providing sector lost 81,000 jobs, while employment in the goods-producing sector fell by 88,000. The drop in goods-producing jobs included the loss of 44,000 manufacturing jobs, the smallest decrease since May of 2008.

Employment at large businesses fell by 44,000 jobs, while employment at medium-size businesses fell by 57,000. Small businesses lost 68,000 jobs, the smallest drop since July of 2008.

Commenting on the data, Peter Boockvar, equity strategist for Miller Tabak, said, "There remains no question that the pace of job losses has slowed, but the path to healthy job gains I believe will still be unfortunately long."

"In order to begin to see a sustainable fall in the unemployment rate, we need to see 125k-150k job gains per month," he added.

The bigger than expected drop in employment shown by the ADP report may raise some concerns about the outlook for the Labor Department's employment report due to be released on Friday.

The Labor Department report, which includes government jobs, is currently expected to show a decrease of about 120,000 jobs in November following a decrease of 190,000 jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 10.2 percent.

Private sector employment continued to decrease in the month of November, according to a report released by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) on Wednesday, although the report showed a continued slowdown in the pace of job losses. The report showed that non-farm private employment fell by 169,000 jobs in November following a revised decrease of 195,000 jobs in October. Economists had been expecting a decrease of about 150,000 jobs. (Market News Provided by RTTNews)