What Harvey & Irma did to our jobs:
Bottom Line: Through August we'd been chugging along adding private sector jobs at a solid clip of 221,000 per month on average in 2017. Then the hurricanes happened. With five states, including two of the three largest, being meaningfully impacted by hurricanes Harvey and Irma it was natural to expect a significant dent in our job creation momentum and that proved to be the case according to the ADP Report. That being said the job growth was pretty strong considering. In September we added 135,000 jobs nationally. In a normal month that's a poor number that just barely produces more than the 130k or so jobs that are needed monthly to keep pace with population growth. Last month it's impressive that we made any progress faced with as much adversity as we faced. Among the finer points were a couple of areas that looked solid and one number that we have to cross our fingers for a quick recovery with...
Jobs by company size:
Small: -7,000
Mid-sized: +63,000
Large: +79,000
The issue is obvious. In a healthy economy we want to see small companies performing the best. With small companies actually hemorrhaging jobs in September, that's cause for concern. That's where you most see the impact of the storms show up. How many small businesses had to lay off people in Texas, Louisiana and Florida due to the hurricanes? How many will be able to reopen and rebuild? How quickly will they rehire? These will be critical questions to watch and seek answers for over the next month.