Apparently, the US economy follows its way into a strong recovery. Employment level closed 2014 with an increase of roughly 241,000 jobs compared to November 2014. New employees went to work mostly for small businesses, which added 106,000 jobs to the economy. Medium businesses added roughly 70,000 whereas large businesses only 60,000. There have not been major weather events in the US affecting employment so far (winter 2014). Thus, ADP statistics show a good path into 2015.
By industry, Services still leads the hiring in the recovery with a total of 194,000 jobs added last month. Construction and Manufacturing added 23,000 and 26,000 respectively. Carlos Rodriguez, CEO of ADP, pointed out that “December delivered another strong number well above 200,000 to close out a solid year of employment growth with over two and a half million jobs added”.

In terms of the economic recovery from the Great Recession, since early 2014 almost every sector is adding jobs to the economy. The first sector pulling up job creation has been Professional Businesses, which is followed by Trade and Transportation. Although at a slower pace, Manufacturing sector has been also adding jobs since September 2011. The last sector in joining job creation statistics was Construction. Graph # 2 shows percentage change in level of employment indexed to June of 2009 (end of the Great Recession). Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, claims, “The job market continues to power forward. Businesses across all industries and sizes are adding to payrolls. At the current pace of job growth, the economy will be back to full employment by this time next year.”

Optimism among Moody’s analyst contrasts against economic perspectives of several surveys such as the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey (TMOS). Many of the TMOS responders manifested cautiousness, and actually adjusted expectations about future new employees, at least, for the six first months of 2015.

ADP collects data from 411,000 companies for which it manages their payroll information. Those 411,000 companies comprise more than twenty percent of all total US private sector companies.