Back when President Barack Obama took office for his second term in November 2012, the jobless rate had sunken significantly – and seemingly from out of the blue. More than 270,000 Americans joined the workforce that month alone, according to ADP Payroll's monthly employment change report, which monitors modifications to private payrolls. This was a sharp increase from just a month before, when only 140,000 new jobs were recorded, and was likely a last minute boon to the president's campaign for reelection.
However, it wasn't long until this abnormal reading proved to be nothing more than a blip. December 2012 saw only an additional 200,000 individuals enter the workforce and subsequent months thereafter continued a downward trend. While many analysts anticipated that the lack of employment momentum would have bottomed out back in April, when just over 120,000 new payrolls were recorded, it appears that darker days may still be on the horizon.
The latest employment change report from ADP shows that only 130,000 workers began receiving paychecks over the past month, which is significantly below analysts' expectations of 150,000. What's even more depressing about this news is the fact that the 166,000 jobs ADP had previously posted as being added during September was downwardly revised in this latest report to a meager 145,000.
"The government shutdown and debt limit brinksmanship hurt the already softening job market in October. Average monthly growth has fallen below 150,000. Any further weakening would signal rising unemployment. The weaker job growth is evident across most industries and company sizes," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytic's, said in a statement for Business Insider.
There is good news with the report, though. The number of goods-producing jobs added over the period jumped from 16,000 in September to a robust 24,000. Additionally, construction payrolls added 14,000 jobs, while the number of manufacturing jobs increased by roughly 5,000.
Service-providing jobs, however, plummeted to just 107,00 in October – down from 130,000 in September, which is the estimated total of all jobs added in the past month. On top of that, it appears that professional/business services shed 5,000 jobs, proving that there is little security in historically sound industries.
The ADP report measures only the private sector and not governmental jobs, representing 411,000 U.S. clients and more than 24 million workers. Usually, this data is released in conjunction with the official jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, but because of the government shutdown – which lasted for a staggering 16 days right in the middle of the month – the information for October won't be released for at least another week.
While the data produced by the government may counter ADP's figures, there is no doubt that the shutdown has had a significant effect on the overall economy, given the fact that even the private sector showed a major slowdown over the past month. By failing to come to an agreement on the debt ceiling and the federal budget for such a long period of time, lawmakers may have squandered any strides made by the national economy to climb back from the Great Recession.
All forecasting, however, is purely based on speculation, and with such uncertainty continuing to plague nearly all job sectors, it is important that those who have invested wisely over the past decade look into asset protection to shield them from the whims of shaky policymakers.