The ADP National Employment Report for the month of October is out and it shows under its new methodology that the U.S. private sector added some 158,000 jobs in the month. Dow Jones was calling for only 88,000 while Bloomberg was calling for 131,000 with a range of 80,000 to 170,000. While ADP has been challenged on and off over its relevance, investors, traders and economists do still try to use this report to predict the unemployment and payrolls data that is always released one day later by the Labor Department.

The unemployment and nonfarm payrolls report is expected to be released on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST and Bloomberg has estimates of 125,000 in nonfarm payrolls, 120,000 in private sector payrolls, and an official unemployment rate of 7.9%. The month of September had that controversial 7.8% unemployment rate and nonfarm payrolls grew by 114,000 with private sector payrolls coming up by 104,000.

Today’s ADP data was ahead of expectations. Unfortunately, the change is probably not enough to create any major swings in the payrolls estimates, and the change in the methodology is another issue. How Hurricane Sandy plays into this remains to be seen.

It is interesting that the gains are this large because layoff announcements have been on the rise as well.

JON C. OGG

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