As we mentioned earlier, if there was one thing that would guarantee an 1800 print in the Stalingrad and Propaganda 500 index today, it was a 0 or negative ADP print. Well, it wasn’t that bad. But it was close: with a paltry 130K private jobs created in October, this was a monthly plunge in private (i.e. non-government) payrolls, well below expectations, and substantially lower than the September 166K print which also was revised lower to 145K. It was also the 4th consecutive monthly decline starting with a 190K print in June, and it’s all downhill from there. Finally, this was the 7th ADP miss in the past 8 months. We can’t wait as the spinmasters do all they can to explain how private payrolls were affected by a government shutdown.
Broken down by jobs, while there was finally a pick up in manufacturing (+5K), and Construction (+14K) jobs, this was more than offset by the best paying jobs of all, Financial Activities, which dipped by 5K in October, in line with the wholesale termination of every banker dealing with the mortgage banking loss center.
Blame Obamacare: the small firms showed the smallest job gain in 10 months, medium-sized firms: smallest gain in 14 months.
Report highlights: