The ADP employment report is supposed to be the definitive preview of non-farm payrolls but the ISM non-manufacturing employment index often does a better job.
The problem is the ISM numbers are often released after NFP so it’s useless but this week we got the ISM numbers first.
The headline in the ISM report was soft but the market didn’t react. Why? Because the employment component was strong at 59.6 from 58.5 previously.
In fact, it was the strongest reading since 2005.
ISM employment index
Revisions in the non-farm payrolls report make it tough to find the data to compare to the first release but if non-farm payrolls gets anywhere near the ISM employment component then it could be a +300K reading on Friday (consensus is 223K).
NFP vs ISM non employment
