Private sector employment grew by 257,000 jobs from November to December, according to the December ADP National Employment Report.
The report is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data and measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis.
According to Econoday’s analysis of the report, ADP is calling for unusual strength in Friday's employment report since its estimate is far outside Econoday's consensus at 190,000 and well outside the high estimate for 227,000.
"2015 had a strong close with December showing the largest job gains of the year,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and head of the ADP Research Institute.
“Overall, the average monthly employment growth was just under 200,000 for the year in contrast to almost 240,000 jobs per month in 2014. Weakness in the energy and manufacturing sectors was mostly responsible for the drop off,” said Yildirmaz.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, added, “Strong job growth shows no signs of abating. The only industry shedding jobs is energy. If this pace of job growth is sustained, which seems likely, the economy will be back to full employment by mid-year. This is a significant achievement, given that the last time the economy was at full employment was nearly a decade ago.”
