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Jobs Week takes a couple steps forward this morning, following yesterday’s JOLTS report (a bit fatter than expected, with fewer job quits overall), with private-sector payrolls reported by Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) and Weekly Jobless Claims of both the Initial and Continuing variety. We’ll wrap this series of labor force data tomorrow morning with the all-important Employment Situation non-farm payroll report ahead of the opening bell.
ADP private-sector payrolls for December came in hotter than expected: 164K versus 130K consensus. These ramp up from the slight downward revision to the previous month, from 103K to 101K. Goods-producing jobs brought in a scant 9K for the month, but Services more than made up the difference: 155K. By comparison, current estimates for tomorrow’s non-farm payrolls is right around 170K, which in real time can be considered fairly in-line.
Over the past few months, we had been seeing some discrepancies between private-sector job gains based on company size. Some months, we’ve seen large firms (more than 500 employees) cutting deeper into their workforces while small companies (fewer than 50 employees) and medium-sized businesses taking up the slack. December’s numbers were still biased this way, but more even: small companies brought 74K new private-sector jobs, medium-sized gained 53K and large grew 40K.
As we’ve seen in a majority of monthly totals going back to the Great Reopening a few years ago, Leisure & Hospitality jobs led the way, as they did last month: 59K new private-sector jobs filled. Education & Healthcare was next at 42K, also to past trends, with Construction jobs up to 24K and Financials 18K. Manufacturing, as we’ve seen in other data points going back several months, was lower: -13K. Based on a survey of 10 million wage earners, those who stay in their current jobs now earn +5.4% than a year ago; job-changers could expect an +8% raise. These figures are somewhat muted from the recent past.
Initial Jobless Claims once again came in lower than expected this Thursday morning: 202K versus 218K expected, which was the previous week’s headline now upwardly revised to 219K. This 202K figure is the lowest we’ve seen since mid-October, and yet another respite from the 260K+ numbers we’d started to see in the summer of last year. This granular read of the overall labor market has routinely been an indicator that domestic labor remains in high demand.
Continuing Claims, which had been growing notably week over week until its near-term peak above 1.9 million a few weeks ago, fell to 1.855 million (two weeks back — these numbers report a week in arrears from new claims) from an upwardly revised 1.886 million the previous week. Ultimately, we are up from the very-low 1.6 million longer-term weekly claims we were seeing a year ago, which means the labor market is filling up over time, but new claims continue to show a reluctance from employers to lay off their workers.
One thing to note regarding all this employment data — and goes for tomorrow’s non-farm payrolls from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well — is that we tend to experience some seasonal distortions: holiday shopping workforce levels, end-of-year layoffs, etc. which are prone to notable revisions in the near future.Still, the picture is fairly clear: employment levels aren’t going to fall off a table anytime soon. Not to say that day is not coming, but it’s not in this current data.
Two Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) companies reported earnings — yes, already! — this morning: agribusiness major ConAgra (CAG - Free Report) and drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA - Free Report) , which happened to be the worst-performing stock in the Dow last year (-30%). Both companies managed to beat estimates on their bottom line: ConAgra by 4 cents to 71 cents per share (still down from 81 cents posted in the year-ago quarter) and Walgreens by 3 cents to 66 cents per share ($1.16 reported a year ago). But while Walgreens beat top-line expectations by +5%, ConAgra came in slightly below estimates: $3.21 billion versus $3.24 billion in the Zacks consensus.
Image: Bigstock
ADP, Jobless Claims Better than Expected
Jobs Week takes a couple steps forward this morning, following yesterday’s JOLTS report (a bit fatter than expected, with fewer job quits overall), with private-sector payrolls reported by Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) and Weekly Jobless Claims of both the Initial and Continuing variety. We’ll wrap this series of labor force data tomorrow morning with the all-important Employment Situation non-farm payroll report ahead of the opening bell.
ADP private-sector payrolls for December came in hotter than expected: 164K versus 130K consensus. These ramp up from the slight downward revision to the previous month, from 103K to 101K. Goods-producing jobs brought in a scant 9K for the month, but Services more than made up the difference: 155K. By comparison, current estimates for tomorrow’s non-farm payrolls is right around 170K, which in real time can be considered fairly in-line.
Over the past few months, we had been seeing some discrepancies between private-sector job gains based on company size. Some months, we’ve seen large firms (more than 500 employees) cutting deeper into their workforces while small companies (fewer than 50 employees) and medium-sized businesses taking up the slack. December’s numbers were still biased this way, but more even: small companies brought 74K new private-sector jobs, medium-sized gained 53K and large grew 40K.
As we’ve seen in a majority of monthly totals going back to the Great Reopening a few years ago, Leisure & Hospitality jobs led the way, as they did last month: 59K new private-sector jobs filled. Education & Healthcare was next at 42K, also to past trends, with Construction jobs up to 24K and Financials 18K. Manufacturing, as we’ve seen in other data points going back several months, was lower: -13K. Based on a survey of 10 million wage earners, those who stay in their current jobs now earn +5.4% than a year ago; job-changers could expect an +8% raise. These figures are somewhat muted from the recent past.
Initial Jobless Claims once again came in lower than expected this Thursday morning: 202K versus 218K expected, which was the previous week’s headline now upwardly revised to 219K. This 202K figure is the lowest we’ve seen since mid-October, and yet another respite from the 260K+ numbers we’d started to see in the summer of last year. This granular read of the overall labor market has routinely been an indicator that domestic labor remains in high demand.
Continuing Claims, which had been growing notably week over week until its near-term peak above 1.9 million a few weeks ago, fell to 1.855 million (two weeks back — these numbers report a week in arrears from new claims) from an upwardly revised 1.886 million the previous week. Ultimately, we are up from the very-low 1.6 million longer-term weekly claims we were seeing a year ago, which means the labor market is filling up over time, but new claims continue to show a reluctance from employers to lay off their workers.
One thing to note regarding all this employment data — and goes for tomorrow’s non-farm payrolls from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well — is that we tend to experience some seasonal distortions: holiday shopping workforce levels, end-of-year layoffs, etc. which are prone to notable revisions in the near future.Still, the picture is fairly clear: employment levels aren’t going to fall off a table anytime soon. Not to say that day is not coming, but it’s not in this current data.
Two Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) companies reported earnings — yes, already! — this morning: agribusiness major ConAgra (CAG - Free Report) and drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA - Free Report) , which happened to be the worst-performing stock in the Dow last year (-30%). Both companies managed to beat estimates on their bottom line: ConAgra by 4 cents to 71 cents per share (still down from 81 cents posted in the year-ago quarter) and Walgreens by 3 cents to 66 cents per share ($1.16 reported a year ago). But while Walgreens beat top-line expectations by +5%, ConAgra came in slightly below estimates: $3.21 billion versus $3.24 billion in the Zacks consensus.
For more on WBA's earnings, click here.
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