REUTERS/Fred Prouser
People search for jobs on computers at the Verdugo Jobs Center, a partnership with the California Employment Development Department, in Glendale, California.
Economists estimate that private companies added 180,000 jobs, up from 176,000 from August.
Societe Generale's Brian Jones is a bit more optimistic than the consensus: "Improved business conditions between the August and September establishment surveys, along with a further drop in the average number of persons filing initial claims for jobless benefits, suggest that the number of private payrolls processed jumped by 235,000 - the largest job gain since last November."
At this point, thanks to the government shutdown the Bureau of Labor Statistics will not be publishing the official jobs report on Friday. As such, the economy-watching world will be focused on the ADP's alternative.
"[T]here has been a growing case for the ADP report to get more attention than it did in the past; its reliability seems to have improved since Moody's replaced Macroeconomic Advisers as the compiler of the data late last year," said High Frequency Economics' Jim O'Sullivan. "ADP's misses have averaged 38K-without regard to sign-in the 11 months since Moody's took over, down from 63K in the previous 11 months. Of course, that is just an average. Misses have ranged from -63K-with payrolls weaker than ADP-to +57K-with payrolls stronger than ADP. Last month's miss was -24K, with the ADP series up 176K and private payrolls in the BLS report up 152K; total payrolls rose 169K."
"Unfortunately, we will still lack the other labor-related data provided by the monthly employment report, such as the length of the workweek, average hourly earnings and the unemployment rate," said Deutsche Bank's Carl Riccadonna. "So while ADP will provide a reasonable substitute for payrolls, the trajectory of aggregate income growth (the product of workers, hours and wages) will remain largely unknown."