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 ADP August estimate of 163K new nonfarm private employment jobs, a decrease over the ADP July figure of 217K.

The 163K estimate came in below the Investing.com consensus of 188K for the ADP number.

The Investing.com forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is for 190K nonfarm private new jobs and the unemployment rate to drop to 3.8%. Their forecast for the August full nonfarm new jobs is (the PAYEMS number) is 191K.

Here is an excerpt from today’s ADP report press release:

“Although we saw a small slowdown in job growth the market remains incredibly dynamic,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Midsized businesses continue to be the engine of growth, adding nearly 70 percent of all jobs this month, and remain resiliant in the current economic climate.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, “The job market is hot. Employers are aggressively competing to hold onto their existing workers and to find new ones. Small businesses are struggling the most in this competition, as they increasingly can’t fill open positions.”

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