by Jill Mislinksi

The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment (the PAYEMS series in the FRED repository).

Today we have the November estimate of 217K new nonfarm private employment jobs from ADP, a jump from October’s 196K, which is an upward revision from 182K.

The 217K estimate came in above the Investing.com forecast of 190K for the ADP number.

The Investing.com forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is for 200K nonfarm new jobs (the actual PAYEMS number).

Here is an excerpt from today’s ADP report:

“The strongest gains in the service sector since June led to greater employment growth in November,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, VP and head of the ADP Research Institute. “The increase was driven in large part by a rebound in professional/business service jobs.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, “Job growth remains strong and steady. The current pace of job creation is twice that needed to absorb growth in the working age population. The economy is fast approaching full employment and will be there no later than next summer.”

Here is a visualization of the two series over the previous twelve months.

The key difference between the two series is that the BLS series is for Nonfarm Payrolls while ADP tracks private employment.