One Jobs Report Signals Better Growth

By Mark Memmott

Published July 7, 2011 at 11:11 AM EDT

There were 157,000 jobs added to businesses' payrolls in June, according to the widely watched ADP National Employment Report, a private-sector look at the labor market that's sometimes an advance indication of what the will say about the same month.

According to The Associated Press, ADP's figure is "more than double [what] economists had forecast and far more than the 36,000 added the previous month."

Bloomberg News says that this morning, "stocks rallied, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to an almost two-month high, and commodities rose" in part because of the news from ADP.

The BLS' figures on job growth and the unemployment rate in June are due Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. In May, BLS has estimated, the jobless rate was 9.1 percent and businesses added only 83,000 jobs.

Mark Memmott

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.

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