The July ADP Data came in Better than Expected

The Employment Situation Forecast was for record Full-time Jobs and Workers

The ADP Private Sector Payroll report was released this Wednesday. There was growth in all sectors except mining and Logging (Natural Resources) and Information (IT.) There were 156,000 private sector payroll positions added during July and another 15 positions added to the combined May and June data. This was covered in the "July ADP Report" article.

The Employment Situation Report forecast article included projections for full-time jobs to spike, part-time jobs to fall, and unemployment to be lower than last July with the possibility of being higher than they were during June, according to the Current Population Survey (CPS) Data. The Current Employment Statistics (CES) worker and wage data pointed towards potential weakness, even as a record level of non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) CES private sector workers was anticipated, and seasonally adjusted government workers were expected to boost the non-farm payroll (NFP) number.

We continue climbing the "Jobs Mountain." This column has addressed the "Jobs Iceberg" that was present between August 2007 and June of 2016. We lost over 14 million full-time jobs between July 2007 and January 2010. The top of the iceberg was part-time job growth that nearly reached 5 million. We lost Summer 2016 gains during the Winter of that year. The same thing happened, although to a much lesser degree, during the Winter of 2017. This month we added 611,000 FT jobs and trimmed only 55,000 PT jobs. We have 1.451 million more full-time jobs and 667,000 fewer part-time jobs than last year. This is important because "all recessions are Jobs Recessions." We have more people working this July than last July and more than have ever worked.

Seasonally adjusted Current Population Survey Jobs data was the best since 2006. Normally we see seasonally adjusted full-time job gains and part-time job losses or seasonally adjusted  part-time job gains and full-time job losses. There were a combined 392,000 seasonally adjusted jobs added to the economy. We also added 188,000 potential workers to the workforce population. More jobs than new workers means that the workforce participation rate improved this month, because the number of jobs increased and the number of unemployed workers increased from last month.

The Unemployment Level jumped by 264,000 non-seasonally adjusted and 88,000 seasonally adjusted. It was anticipated that the non-seasonally adjusted data would rise month to month. This month's 6.556 million is still lower than it was during July 2018 when it was 6.730 million

Participation hit a Record for this President. The unadjusted participation rate came in at 63.63%. This is the highest value of this Presidency. The last time that the participation rate was at this level was near this level was July of 2014 when it was 63.53%. The thing to remember is that during July 2014 the unemployment rate was 6.54%. There were 10.307 million unemployed workers compared to 6.556 million this July.

The Number of Multiple Job Workers rose from 7.987 million to 8.310 million. The level of people working two part-time jobs set a July record at 2.091 million, the number of people working two full-time jobs was 376,000 and the number of people working a primary FT job and a secondary PT job came in at 4.503 million, the second highest ever for the month of July. More detail will be provided in the "Men and Women" article. There is also a "Male Mountain" and a "Female Mountain" version of the Jobs Iceberg/Mountain data.

This is not the headline data. The headline data is the seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll (NFP) came in at 164,000 seasonally adjusted workers added this month. We saw 148,000 private sector workers added this month. This may be concerning to some pundits because this is the lowest July level of position added since July 2014. This s not the whole story.

We saw a better non-seasonally adjusted private sector number this year than we saw recorded during July 2010-2013, and July 2017, and July 2018. There were 130,000 NSA CES private sector positions added this month compared to 80,000 during July 2017 and 74,000 added during July 2018. We only had 12,000 NSA CES private sector workers added during July 2012.

We saw non-seasonally adjusted gains in all sectors month to month except Information (IT,) Education and Health Services (EHS,) and Government.  Mining and Logging (M/L) was unchanged.  We saw non-seasonally adjusted growth July to July in all sectors other than IT. The most growth from last July were in Construction, EHS, PBS, OS, Manufacturing. More detail will be given in the "Wages and Workers" article..

We saw seasonally adjusted growth in  all sectors except IT. The largest month to month gains were in  EHS, FIRE, PBS, Other Services, and Manufacturing while the July to July gains were in Construction, EHS, PBS, M/L, OS, and and Leisure and Hospitality.

There is a considerable amount of data to discuss. The Wages and Workers data will be the next topic, Wages increased while hours dropped, non-seasonally adjusted. Which sectors saw the best data? Which sectors set July records?

The increase in full-time jobs means that we should have another Jobs Mountain for Men, and another Jobs Mountain for Women. The surge in dual PT jobs should boost the number of women working multiple jobs and the number of dual FT workers should boost the number of men working dual jobs. This will be addressed in the "War on (Wo)Men" article along with the multiple job holder data.

President Trump is producing FT Jobs while cutting Unemployed workers. This was a solid jobs report. We have a record level of non-seasonally adjusted CPS jobs. We have a record level of NSA CES Private Sector workers. The unemployment rate is still trending lower while the participation rate is trending higher from year to year. We have a record level of FT jobs. The preliminary data is that President Trump and former President Clinton are still the only Presidents to cut the unemployment level and boost full-time jobs during their first 30 months in office.

The data behaved within expectations. The possibility exists that we could set further record for jobs and workers during the Christmas season. We are poised to set record lows for unemployed workers during October. All recessions are jobs recessions. We have more jobs now than last July.

It's the Economy.