Wednesday, March 07, 2012

ADP National Employment Report: February 2012

Today, private staffing and business services firm ADP released the latest installment of their National Employment Report indicating that the situation for private employment in the U.S. improved in February as private employers added 216,000 jobs in the month bringing the total employment level 1.72% above the level seen in February 2011.

With today's report, ADP revised back data for 2010 and 2011 showing that the recovery has been fairly consistent with a few spotty periods of sluggishness while more recently, the trend had been picking up momentum.

It's important to note though that the level of jobs is still far below the peak seen in late 2007 and still near the lows seen during the worst period of the "dot-com" recession, the bottom looks to be clearly defined and the trend is looking comparable to past recoveries.

Perusing the rest of the data in the ADP dataset you can see the the economy is currently showing the most growth for small to mid-sized service providing jobs with goods-producing jobs remaining near trough levels.

Look for Friday’s BLS Employment Situation Report to likely show somewhat similar trends.