The ADP report which is issued two days before the official US Government report today reveals that the number of unemployed people increased significantly in the month.

DECEMBER ADP EMPLOYMENT CHANGE: -693K V -495K Expected
- Prior month revised a second time from -472K to -476K (original Nov report was -250K, ADP cites a “new methodology” for the additional revisions to previous data).

- Small businesses            – 281K
- Medium businesses         -321K
- Large businesses              -91K
- Goods-producing sector: -220K
- Service-providing sector: -473K
- Manufacturing industry:   -120K

The ADP report brings with it some additional concern because historically the ADP numbers have been ‘better’ than the Government data. If this trend were to hold true then that would indicate a job loss number in the neighborhood of 825,000 for December when the data is released on Friday morning.

ADP claims they have changed their methodology for calculating their figures, so this is the wild card in the data now. Will they still be historically under the Government data? We will see on Friday.