ADP Report: 204,000 New Private Sector Jobs in August

The private payroller processor ADP released its monthly employment report this morning Thursday, September 4th.  

The ADP report usually precedes the official BLS report by a day or two and doesn't contain quite as much information.  However, it is usually a good harbinger of the BLS report.  This morning ADP says that 204,000 new private payroll jobs were added in August 2014. 

Now for years, since Obama took office, the "pundits" were declaring that we needed at least 200,000 new jobs per month to consider that we had any kind of momentum in terms of job growth. But, now that we have had 200+ total job growth in 15 of the past 22 months (and 8 out of the last 10 months).. we have commentators saying things like "U.S. businesses slowed their pace of hiring in August, according to an employment survey released Thursday. The survey, along with other job-related news, suggests a firming but not robust labor market." That was the Wall Street Journal reporting. 

Steve Rothwell at msn.money wrote: "STRONG HIRING: U.S. businesses added jobs at a healthy pace in August, according to a private survey, the fifth straight month of solid gains. Payroll processer ADP said Thursday that private employers added 204,000 jobs last month, down from 212,000 in July, which was revised slightly lower. Job gains above 200,000 are usually enough to lower the unemployment rate." 

Yep, that's a better lead in, but, because we have so many people retiring, we really don't need more than 100,000 new jobs a month to lower the unemployment rate. In fact, we have "only" averaged 175,000 new jobs over the past 4 1/2 years, since the unemployment rate peaked, and the unemployment rate has come down 3.8%. It has come down 1.6% over these past 22 months.

Read the whole report HERE.