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ADP July Report – what are we seeing?

ADP have released their July report, and we wanted to see how their employment data compares with our data about the job market. If you don’t read ADP’s report, they collect data on payroll for 460,000 businesses, accounting for 26 million employees nationally. So they’re a great indicator of who is in work.

In short, if people in work is high, and job vacancies are high, then it’s a good indicator that the economy is getting back on track. If there are areas falling short, that’s interesting too. So let’s take a look!

High level numbers

  • From July to June, ADP is reporting an increase in employment of 167,000 across the country. 
  • This follows three months of more volatile change, as employment fell by 19.4 million, before recovering 7.6 million. 
  • In the meantime, job vacancies have risen by 349,000 over the same period. This is following on from a 303,000 increase from May to June.

Big winners

There have been big gains in Logistics and Warehouse industries. ADP’s category of Trade, Transportation and Utilities is the closest category to ours, and that has seen an employment increase of 41,000 between June and July. Similarly Logistics and Warehouse roles have grown by 170,000 according to our data. 

Education and Health sectors have added 46,000 employees to payroll, while they are looking to hire 67,000 more staff (60,000 for Healthcare, 7,000 for Education)

Meanwhile Leisure and Hospitality is bouncing back after a considerable fall, with an extra 38,000 employees on payroll, but a further 65,000 vacancies. 

Areas of concern

ADP has seen a fall in the number of staff in the Information sector of around 3,000. While small, any fall is something to be concerned about. However, the number of vacancies in our IT jobs category is up 12,000, so perhaps this is just a temporary blip.

More concerning is Financial jobs where there are 18,000 fewer people being employed, and in fact there are 5,000 fewer jobs being advertised in Accounting and Finance jobs. This represents a fall of about 6% in advertised vacancies. However, the first week of August has seen a small spike in the vacancies so it might be a temporary dip.

Overall picture

We’re still in recovery mode. People in work fell dramatically earlier this year, before bouncing back some of the way, but it’s still down. Hiring followed a similar dramatic fall but the recovery rate is much slower. Many people are still out of work, but there is an increasing number of opportunities available for them. 

Small comfort no doubt, but better than the alternative.