By Kathleen Madigan
Businesses added a solid number of workers in October, as
measured by a revamped survey of private-sector hiring released
Thursday. However, layoff announcements jumped in the month.
Private-sector jobs in the U.S. increased 158,000 last month,
according to a national employment report calculated by payroll
processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) and forecasting firm
Moody's Analytics.
The October report is the first since ADP announced last week it
had overhauled its job-collecting methodology.
The new report breaks down employment by five categories of firm
size.
In October, firms employing between 1-19 workers increased jobs
by 18,000; firms with 20-49 employees added 32,000. Medium-sized
businesses with payrolls of 50-499 workers added 27,000. Among
large firms, businesses with 500-999 employees added 12,000 and
large companies with more than 1,000 employees added 69,000.
Service-sector jobs increased by 144,000 last month, but factory
jobs lost 8,000 slots.
Last week, ADP announced major changes to its payroll survey.
ADP says the new methodology is geared toward capturing where the
monthly job count will be revised to, not necessarily the initial
reading of payrolls as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
on the first Friday of almost every month.
The new survey will cover 406,000 companies instead of 344,000
used in the old method. It will now be overseen by Moody's
Analytics instead of Macroeconomic Advisers.
Under the new method the September increase was 88,200 jobs.
Under the old methodology the September payroll gain was reported
as 162,000.
The ADP survey tallies only private-sector jobs. The BLS's
nonfarm payroll data, to be released Friday, include government
workers.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expect total nonfarm
payrolls increased by 125,000 in October, and last month's jobless
rate is projected to edge up to 7.9% from 7.8% in September.
In the past, economists criticized ADP for posting big misses
compared to the BLS's payroll figures. Forecasters are likely to
wait to see how the new ADP numbers match up to the government's
tally before using ADP as a good signal for payroll changes.
ADP, of Roseland, N.J., offers payroll processing, human
resource and benefit administration services to about 600,000
clients worldwide. Economics firm Moody's Analytics is a subsidiary
of Moody's Corporation.
In other job-related news, job cut announcements jumped 41% in
October to 47,724, the highest level in five months, according to a
report done by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray &
Christmas.
The report said layoff plans usually increase after weak
earnings reports, which was the case in October.
--Write to Kathleen Madigan at kathleen.madigan@dowjones.com