It is some convoluted jobs number....which should be of no surprise to anyone paying attention.
If this comes close to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on Friday, it will signal a decent if unspectacular start to the New Year. ADP estimates that employers added 257,000 private-sector jobs last month, an increase of 40,000 jobs over its estimate for November, and the best result for all of 2015:
That was the good news, now the whole story, nuthin' but the story.
The news isn’t all good. In fact, it shows that 2015 closed out at a lower rate of job creation than 2014, at least on the ADP scale:
Neither of these levels suggest blockbuster growth. The US economy needs to generate around 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth at current workforce-participation rates. Coming in “just under 200,000 a month” isn’t enough growth to make significant dents in the ranks of sidelined workers from the Great Recession, and seeing the growth level subside over the last year doesn’t produce much confidence that December’s outlier result will sustain in 2016.