Edit: Not sure what’s up with the downvotes. ADP is a private payroll management and hiring company. So they do have a good view into that sector of the labor market. But not all employers use them, and they don’t include government and other types of employment. The Non-Farm Payrolls number due on Friday from the BLS is what actually matters. ADP is intentionally fronting the BLS to position themselves as some sort of reliable data source.
ADP is only private jobs, whereas BLS is also government, which has had job losses. If anything this MAY paint a misleadingly positive overall picture.
When I was trading both numbers were important indicators. And ADP is definitely a reliable source.
For the foreseeable future ADP will be very important because it isolates on private jobs which will help to compare to the federal government firings and the fallout from that.
I don't believe he was implying anything about either set of data, only pointing out that this is the ADP data and the BLS data should be released shortly.
But, I'm with you, there is little reason to trust any official government numbers right now. I don't know how much DOGE has infiltrated BLS, but I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt given what's happened across other agencies.
This is super interesting. I run a remote job board as a hobby (see below). My best estimate of jobs my crawler found as well as ones it did not is about 12,000 - 15,000 remote jobs added in February. This is a much higher proportion than I would have guessed otherwise.
(Edit: I am wrong, I am comparing US jobs to global remote jobs, still interesting, just bad proportions)
It would be wild to go all the way from the housing crisis where in response the government spending was going to supposedly create tons of inflation and now and still not running into massive inflation, or even seeing expected economic downturn cycles.
And then running headlong into something as insidious as stagflation.
This will likely drive unemployment up. The retraction of capital from labor spending doesn't seem like a great thing overall, but I wonder where the money will go (does it go instead to scalable improvements like infrastructure/cloud spend?)
I expect some of it is going simply to savings, or advanced allocation of materials ahead of tariffs. Some companies may simply opt to reduce spend ahead of perceived economic downturn e.g. to maintain reserves in anticipation of reduced income. But I imagine this is measurable and would be curious the extent to which this impacts the overall trends.
Savings to Treasury Bills/Bonds, would be the mostly likely outcome. If the market is expected to do -2.5% this year (e.g. who knows really), not doing anything with your money and letting the government pay interest is often the best option.
You're not expanding, sure. But you can take solace that 2% YoY is better than -10%.
Top comment is a one sided political one...what happened to HN? :(
Maybe it's always been this politically one sided and I just hadn't noticed until now, I just always saw it as a place for cool tech and real discussions. But now I'm noticing liberal comments are incentivized and anything remotely non liberal (like this one) are flagged into oblivion. I guess this means I should probably spend less time in comment sections, content just seems skewed now.
That's funny because not that long ago, HN had a pretty noticeable conservative+libertarian slant.
I think what you're seeing as liberal comments are really a testament to just how batshit crazy the current administration is behaving. Regardless of your political alignment, this amount of chaos an uncertainty is generally disfavored by the markets, the economy, etc.
Edit - lol, and now I have the downvotes that prove HN isn't suddenly gone liberal - there's a big chunk of regulars who are FAR from liberal.
What am I supposed to say? "Launching an Economic World War on the basis of an unfounded national crisis with age old allies and sinking the US economy along with them is an interesting political decision for President Trump with uncertain outcomes and motivations"?
Don't you understand that holding any particular opinion on any non-technical matter is partisanship, and that partisan politics is intellectually bankrupt?
Not commenting on general trends, but in the specific case of this story: sometimes reality itself just isn't nuanced and one side is simply wrong. The current US administration's economic policy is disastrous. I don't see this is as a political statement, just a statement of fact. You don't have to be left leaning to agree with this statement.
It's hard to imagine what "nuanced" takes one can make in good faith. The traditional defense of Trump's tariff threats that I've heard the most is that he isn't planning on actually doing it, that it's all 5D chess to force Canada and Mexico into concessions (whatever those may be). But that defense has been rendered obsolete by the fact that the tariffs are now here. So what nuance are you looking for, exactly? What is there left to say in defense of this economic policy?
I think commenting on the POTUS's trade war is relevant to jobs numbers.
You don't have to like it, but it is certainly the context everyone is operating in. Only one POTUS started a trade war right now. If that's one sided I don't know what to tell you, it's also a fact...
You're always going to get criticism of the people in power when they do dumb stuff regardless of which party they are. It doesn't really matter if they are Democrat or Republican or United Russia.
Just perusing resumes recently and we got a ton of resumes from banking / insurance. Not at all sure why, could be coincidence but that's how it shook out for us recently.
Trade, education, health services and IT saw jobs losses. More jobs in leisure and hospitality. Impact of tariffs is still not clear, also not clear how the tariffs will look like. I suspect uncertainty plays a role. Employers reluctant to hire if they are uncertain about future. Good thing it may justify lowering interest rates
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[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadEdit: Not sure what’s up with the downvotes. ADP is a private payroll management and hiring company. So they do have a good view into that sector of the labor market. But not all employers use them, and they don’t include government and other types of employment. The Non-Farm Payrolls number due on Friday from the BLS is what actually matters. ADP is intentionally fronting the BLS to position themselves as some sort of reliable data source.
I guess we'll know here soon.
The April one is likely where it's really going to show up.
look up BLS versus household survey and maybe you can see some of the hand wringing...
For the foreseeable future ADP will be very important because it isolates on private jobs which will help to compare to the federal government firings and the fallout from that.
But, I'm with you, there is little reason to trust any official government numbers right now. I don't know how much DOGE has infiltrated BLS, but I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt given what's happened across other agencies.
(Edit: I am wrong, I am comparing US jobs to global remote jobs, still interesting, just bad proportions)
https://tangerinefeed.net/
And then running headlong into something as insidious as stagflation.
You're not expanding, sure. But you can take solace that 2% YoY is better than -10%.
Maybe it's always been this politically one sided and I just hadn't noticed until now, I just always saw it as a place for cool tech and real discussions. But now I'm noticing liberal comments are incentivized and anything remotely non liberal (like this one) are flagged into oblivion. I guess this means I should probably spend less time in comment sections, content just seems skewed now.
I think what you're seeing as liberal comments are really a testament to just how batshit crazy the current administration is behaving. Regardless of your political alignment, this amount of chaos an uncertainty is generally disfavored by the markets, the economy, etc.
Edit - lol, and now I have the downvotes that prove HN isn't suddenly gone liberal - there's a big chunk of regulars who are FAR from liberal.
"American economy actively being dismantled. Voters shocked that leopard ate THEIR faces."
We aspire to a higher standard here.
It's hard to imagine what "nuanced" takes one can make in good faith. The traditional defense of Trump's tariff threats that I've heard the most is that he isn't planning on actually doing it, that it's all 5D chess to force Canada and Mexico into concessions (whatever those may be). But that defense has been rendered obsolete by the fact that the tariffs are now here. So what nuance are you looking for, exactly? What is there left to say in defense of this economic policy?
You don't have to like it, but it is certainly the context everyone is operating in. Only one POTUS started a trade war right now. If that's one sided I don't know what to tell you, it's also a fact...
"IM SUCH A VICTIM TO THE WOKENESS" - Quelup
Trump is literally dismantling the US Govt and economy and you're complaining that someone mentioned it, when it's extremely relevant.
I was in shock, wondering how I would keep going without those internet points. I feel your pain, brother.