ADP Plunges In January To 175K; Biggest Miss Since August; December Revised Lower: “Cold, Storms” Blamed

Earlier today, we predicted with absolute accuracy what today’s joke of an ADP print would be:

@GreekFire23 ADP just follows the NFP trend. Look for weak number and downward revision of December’s 238K

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 5, 2014

And sure enough, the January ADP print missed as we expected, printing at 175K vs the expected 185K, while the December 238K was revised lower to 227K, confirming that ADP is nothing but an NDP trend follower and an absolutely worthless and meaningless data point that does nothing to add relevant data to the economic picture.

For those who care, this was the biggest miss since August and the largest monthly drop since August 2012, and the weakest print since August as well.

Here is the actual monthly data. Spot the trend, or alternatively – when the snow started falling.

What is truly hilarious is that ADP thought nobody would notice that they revised November from 228K to 289K. We can only assume this was a typo.

The breakdown by sector:

So much for the manufacturing renaissance: after 5 months of increases, in January 12,000 mfg jobs were lost while the financial sector added 0 workers:

How ADP compares to NFP – as pointed out it is now merely a lagging indicator with zero predictive value:

Finally, for some humor, here is econohack Mark Zandi, explaining the weak number with – what else – winter weather in the winter:

“The U.S. private sector added 175,000 jobs in January, which is in line with the average monthly growth throughout 2013,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, “Cold and stormy winter weather continued to weigh on the job numbers. Underlying job growth, abstracting from the weather, remains sturdy. Gains are broad based across industries and company sizes, the biggest exception being manufacturing, which shed jobs, but that is not expected to continue.”

Actually what shouldn’t be expected to continue, is for anyone to pay any attention to this made up, worthless employment indicator, and yet people do…

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