A report on the U.S. job market from Automatic Data Processing (ADP) on Wednesday morning surprised economists once again by coming in substantially below their expectations. The 135,000 new private-sector jobs created in May were way below the 170,000 estimated by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, which produces the report for ADP, tried to put a positive spin on the disappointment:
The job market continues to expand but growth has slowed since the first of the year.
The softer job market this spring is largely due to significant fiscal drag from [January’s payroll and income] tax increases and [from] government spending cuts....