ADP Is Getting Better At Predicting The Official Jobs Report

The ADP jobs report, which comes out two days before the official BLS jobs report, is generally considered to be a preview of the official report. However, it hasn't been known for being particularly accurate.

For what it's worth, High Frequency Economic's Jim O'Sullivan notes that ADP has been getting more accurate in recent months:

...More relevant from a timing perspective, the ADP private payrolls estimate was 198K, above the consensus for the BLS data tomorrow: +170K for comparable private payrolls and +160K in total. Despite the strength in ADP, we have not changed our 130K forecast for the BLS payrolls series, and 140K for private payrolls. Indeed, we had forecast a fairly strong 180K rise in the ADP series. Our forecast for the BLS data allows for a 50K drag from the big Northeast snowstorm that struck just prior to the sample week; such weather effects tend to be much more noticeable in the government data than in the ADP series.

ADP’s track record appears to have improved somewhat since Moody’s replaced Macroeconomic Advisers as the compiler of the data, although four months of history is not much evidence. The misses, without regard to sign, have averaged 32K since the change- over, including 26K last month, when initially reported payrolls were weaker than ADP. The average miss in the prior 12 months was 58K.