Automatic Data Processing (ADP), a payroll processing company, released their employment report today.  ADP’s employment report is a measure of employment derived from an anonymous subset of ADP’s roughly 500,000 U.S. business clients.  The ADP National Employment Report  indicated a decrease of 22,000 jobs in non-farm private employment.  Is the ADP report an indicator of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment number will look like on Friday?  Below is a representation of how the ADP report has performed as a leading indicator for the BLS report.

If past results are an indication of future results, in this case they probably are, then it would seem the ADP is typically off from the BLS.  Lately, ADP’s results have been overly pessimistic - indicating more jobs lost than gained.  If this holds true through Friday then we at least know that BLS shouldn’t be reporting jobs lost to be greater than 22,000.

The Institute for Supply Chain Management released data on the service sector as well today.  The ISM nonmanufacturing index increased to 50.5 from 49.8 in December.  A number above 50 in the index indicates expansion in activity.  The services sector is still lagging way behind manufacturing as its index rose to a high of 58.4 in January.