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Overview and Methodology
The ADP National Employment Report®
Overview of Methodology & Methodological Enhancements
December 18, 2008
Prepared by
Overview
Publication of the Employment Situation by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
(the BLS) is the first - and generally the most important - release of government-sponsored
economic data every month. Employment is an intrinsically important statistic. Furthermore,
financial markets react, sometimes strongly, to "surprises" in the BLS' estimates
of establishment employment that might signal future changes in monetary policy.
Hence, information that helps analysts anticipate monthly changes in employment
is valuable.
Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) is the nation's premier provider of payroll-related
services. Currently, ADP processes over 500,000 payrolls, for approximately 430,000
separate business entities, covering over 23 million employees, in all major industries
and states. While doing so, every month ADP collects a wealth of information related
to payroll employment well before publication of the Employment Situation.
ADP has contracted with Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC to create and maintain from
this rich, timely dataset new estimates of nonfarm private employment published
in the ADP National Employment Report. These are constructed
from ADP's data on payrolls following a procedure similar to that used by the BLS
to process its monthly survey of Current Employment Statistics into the "official"
estimates of establishment employment. The ADP National Employment Report
is released, for public use only, two days prior to the Employment Situation.
Click here
for complete detail of the methodology used to develop the ADP National Employment
Report.
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