The economic mover and shaker this week is tomorrow's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment (the PAYEMS series in the FRED repository).

Today we have the July estimate of 185K new nonfarm private employment jobs from ADP, down from the June's 229K, which is a downward revision from 237K. Also, the May number was revised downward by 6K.

The 185K estimate came in well below the investing.com forecast of 215K for the ADP number.

The Investing.com forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is for 223K nonfarm new jobs (the actual PAYEMS number).

Here is an excerpt from today's ADP report:

“July employment growth was slower than June, but is still in line with what we have seen since the first of the year,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of ADP. “Notably, large businesses with more than 500 employees had their strongest job gains since last December and were almost double the June number.” 

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said, “Job growth is strong, but it has moderated since the beginning of the year. Layoffs in the energy industry and weaker job gains in manufacturing are behind the slowdown. Nonetheless, even at this slower pace of growth, the labor market is fast approaching full employment.”

Here is a visualization of the two series over the previous twelve months.

The key difference between the two series is that the BLS series is for Nonfarm Payrolls while ADP tracks private employment.