The numbers: According to ADP, the payroll company, U.S. businesses added 233,000 new jobs in October, which was the biggest gain in 15 months. This suggests that the job market is a bit better than was thought before.
In October, the ADP asked economists and found that they thought the economy would add 113,000 new jobs.
The official government jobs number that comes out a few days later is not very good at predicting what ADP will say, though. Each report goes in the same way over time.
A poll of economists by the Wall Street Journal says that the government will only report that 110,000 new jobs were added in October.
The headline number is likely to go down because of the Boeing BA -3.49% strike and the damage from storms Milton and Helene.
In general, it’s harder to find work now than it was a few years ago, but some key parts of the economy still need workers, so companies are still hiring here and there.
If the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates because inflation is slowing down and getting close to where it was before the pandemic, the economy and job market could get a boost by next year.
In the future: Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said, “While ADP isn’t always a good indicator of the official BLS number, we and a lot of other people may be rethinking our estimates for Friday’s update.”
“Perhaps the number of jobs lost because of the storm was as bad as we thought.” It’s possible that the process of gathering data was skewed by businesses that shut down after Helen and Milton and couldn’t answer the poll. Or, the economy might have been much better in October than we thought, making up for the losses caused by Helene. He also said, “All of these things are possible.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was going to open down 0.76 percent and the S&P 500 (SPX) was going to open down 1.52 percent on Wednesday. 10 years of Treasury notes now have a yield of 4.253% instead of 4.293%.
