Conundrum: Private NFP and Preliminary Benchmark vs. Current Official

ADP survey increase in private NFP from 2023M03 is 3.1mn, More than the 2.8mn reported in the current official CES series.

In contrast, the first benchmark shows 819 thousand less in March 2024 than the current official series. If we consider the increase in independent NFP from March 2024, the increase in employment is 2.0mn.

Figure 1: Incremental increase in private NFP from March 2023 according to CES (blue), according to ADP (tan), according to the first benchmark (red square), all in 000’s, sa Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, BLS , and the author’s calculations.

The ADP-Stanford series is not based on surveys, but actual check-cutting activities. Preliminary Benchmark depends on QCEW (unemployment insurance). While the QCEW is a census, the data is updated. In addition, some activities will not be caught as some activities may not be reported to the tax authorities. Therefore, Goldman Sachs thinks that the effective downward revision is about 300K, instead of 818K, for the NFP as a whole (there is no different figure reported by GS for the private NFP).

This entry was posted in with Menzies Chinn.


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