A theory on why ADP and non-farm payrolls are diverging | Forexlive

Non-farm payrolls are holding up why the private survey from ADP is showing a deterioration in jobs.

Why the divergence?

Firstly, these surveys have diverged widely for extended periods before so it could just be the usual variance. ADP has been reworked several times with the aim of tracking the official report better and — as we saw today — it hasn’t been successful. For June, non-farm payrolls showed growth of 147K jobs while ADP was at -33K. To be fair, half of the gains in the official data were from government hiring, which isn’t tracked in ADP but it’s still a large delta and the move has been persistent in the same direction.

What could be happening?

One theory is that it relates back to immigration.

ADP could be better at capturing illegal immigrant jobs than official government data. Often, illegal immigrants are paid with cash rather than something like ADP but there may be a class of workers that are on expired visas, use someone else’s identity or flout the rules in other ways. Given the US crackdown, those jobs may be disappearing.

In contrast, companies and immigrants may be reluctant to report any type of illegal immigration in official non-farm payrolls survey of establishments or households. They could fear that data may be passed onto the Department of Homeland Security or not participate in surveys at all.

In addition, the official data could be better at picking up the backfilling of illegal immigrant jobs by legal Americans, which would look like excess hiring.

All that said, it’s just a theory and not backed up by any data (yet) but there are big things happening in the US economy via immigration and it’s something to keep a close eye on. For now markets are taking it at face value and it’s led to a big jump in the US dollar and a drop in pricing for Fed cuts.