A first look at August job creation - Inside the ADP Jobs Report
Bottom Line: It’s hard to imagine that it’s been six months since lockdowns began across the country. It has. It’s also weird that it’s been four months since some reopening's started as well. Time has been something that has felt entirely different than usual during the pandemic. Time is also something many businesses have been running out of as they’ve attempted to hold on during the virus induced recession and arbitrary decisions regarding reopening's. Collectively what we hope for is continued progress despite the challenges. American free enterprise has always found a way and even while it hasn’t been truly free enterprise during these lockdowns, August still proved to be another month of progress for most businesses and the previously unemployed.
The ADP private sector jobs report is the first view of what happened in August. In a word...progress. Right now, we’ll take anything positive and that’s what we received.
According to the ADP Report there were 428,000 private sector jobs added in August. That included...
- Small businesses: +52,000
- Midsized: +79,000
- Large: +298,000
August was better than July in both total jobs added, the depth of progress across industry’s and participation in growth across all business sizes. That’s especially encouraging. We saw job gains in all industries except information technology. This included the biggest gains coming in leisure and hospitality on back of restrictions being lifted in much of the country. We also saw solid gains in construction and manufacturing which is a leading indicator. This report didn’t show that the economy is off to the races again, but it was a good step forward and shows the potential of what this economy can do given more opportunity. We do continue to see the largest companies benefit disproportionately which has been the most common theme during the lockdowns. The largest companies continue to thrive at the direct expense of small businesses. That’s a shame and should be front and center in the discussions for our South Florida officials who continue to forbid many small businesses to operate at capacity or at all. On Friday we’ll get the full picture with government jobs added in. More to come...