Private job losses mount, ominous for payrolls
Job losses and plans to lay off workers hammered the struggling U.S. economy in the final month of 2008, according to private reports that could foreshadow surprisingly grim labor market data from the government on Friday.
U.S. private employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, up sharply from the revised 476,000 jobs lost in November and far more than economists estimated, a report by ADP Employer Services said on Wednesday.
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Analysts said there was reason to expect a worse outcome in non-farm payrolls than their original projection of 500,000 jobs lost for the economy in December, which was the median of economists’ forecasts in an earlier Reuters poll.
“This is shockingly awful,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
“If the recent relationship between the ADP numbers — after their recent revisions — and the official payroll data holds, then we should expect a number of about minus -700,000 on Friday, the biggest drop in 59 years.”
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