The ADP National Employment Report for April is out, and the results are grim: According to the private business research institute ADP, the nonfarm private sector lost 20,236,000 jobs between March 12 and April 12. The manufacturing sector lost 1,674,000 jobs. ADP uses the same time periods for data collection used by the Department of Labor, which will release its own employment report this Friday.
This latest report can’t cover the full extent of the coronavirus’s impact on employment, since it cuts off its results at April 12. But it does provide a more detailed breakdown of what kinds of jobs were lost specifically. The hardest-hit segment of employment was the leisure and hospitality sector, with 8,607,000 jobs lost. Trade, transport, and utilities jobs lost 3,440,000 positions, and the construction sector lost 2,477,000. (Manufacturing, at more than a million, was fourth.)
Larger companies appear to have been the hardest hit. Companies with over 1,000 employees shed a cumulative 7,621,000 jobs. Companies with between 50 and 499 employees collectively lost more than five million, and firms with less than twenty lost more than three million positions.
The result is a dramatic increase over the same time period for March: According to the Department of Labor, total nonfarm employment fell by 701,000 last month, and manufacturing lost 18,000 jobs. The unprecedented dip in job losses fits the same profile as the unprecedented tip in applications for unemployment insurance, which last week topped 30 million. The third COVID-19 stimulus bill expanded unemployment benefits and payouts.
