ADP Tumbles: Huge Miss To Expectations, Prior Data All Revised Lower, "Winter Weather" Blamed

More snow. That is the assessment of Mark Zandi and the ADP Private Payrolls, which just printed at 139K on expectations of a 155K print. But don't worry: the number was pre-spun for idiot consumption, as the 139K was actually an increase from the January 127K. What was not said is that the January number was a massive revision lower from the previously announced 175K. What will also not be said is that the December ADP print was revised lower from 227K to 191K and the November 289K was chopped off and revised to only 245K. Of course, both of those numbers were massive beats at the time, and have now become misses, but who cares: they have served their algo kneejerk reaction purposes. And while the data is complete garbage, and is obviously manipulated and goalseeked (as we have shown before), it should be welcome to the US to know that in February it generated a whopping 1,000 manufacturing jobs.

But the punchline, certainly, is this from Mark Zandi: "February was another soft month for the job market. Employment was weak across a number of industries. Bad winter weather, especially in mid-month, weighed on payrolls. Job growth is expected to improve with warmer temperatures.”

Because when economists become weathermen, only hilarious idiocy can emerge.

Following the revision, this was the biggest miss since February 2011. Luckily it was in January so it can be ignored.

This is what the current ADP job "gains" look like.

And here is the funny part: today ADP released its annual "data" revisions. The pre and post revised numbers are shown below. The blue are the original, the orange are the new. See if you can spot the difference.

[3]

Incidentally, this downward revision of 20% over the past three months is precisely as we predicted before the data came out, because the manipulation across all data sets is now so glaringly obvious a caveman can do it:

ADP revision today: expect all previous data to mysteriously line up with NFP prints

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 5, 2014 [4]

While the rest of the report is much comparable garbage, for those who still believe the lies they are spoonfed, here it is:

And from Mark Zandi and his merry weathermen:

Goods-producing employment rose by 19,000 jobs in February, up from a downwardly-revised figure of 12,000 in January. Nearly all of the growth came from the construction industry which added 14,000 jobs over the month; this followed downwardly revised increases of 17,000 in the prior two months. Manufacturing eked out a small gain in February adding just 1,000 jobs. January’s decline in manufacturing was upwardly revised to a loss of just 7,000 jobs.

Service-providing industries added 120,000 jobs in February, up from a downwardly-revised January figure of 116,000. The ADP National Employment Report indicates that professional/ business services contributed the most to growth in service-providing industries, adding 33,000 jobs. This was well below the average gains for the industry in 2013. Expansion in trade/transportation/utilities accelerated slightly after a poor showing in January, gaining 31,000 jobs in February. Financial activities employment fell for the second straight month after January’s reading was downwardly revised to an 8,000 job loss. These two months have been the weakest for financial services employment since January and February of 2011.

"The U.S. private sector added 139,000 jobs in February, well below the average over the last 12 months,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said, "February was another soft month for the job market. Employment was weak across a number of industries. Bad winter weather, especially in mid-month, weighed on payrolls. Job growth is expected to improve with warmer temperatures.”

No further comment.

Finally, the ever so informative infographic:

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National Employment Report
For more data and analysis, download the press release.

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For additional insights, download the historical data (Excel file) [6]

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About This Report: The ADP National Employment Report provides a monthly snapshot of the current U.S. nonfarm private sector employment situation based on actual transactional payroll data.