"Fed Mouthpiece": The Federal Reserve Loses Access to "ADP" Employment Data

Jinse Finance reported that "Fed mouthpiece" Nick Timiraos wrote that Federal Reserve officials have recently lost access to employment data provided by third parties. Since 2018, payroll processing company ADP has been providing the Federal Reserve with a dataset containing anonymous employment and income information, covering 20% of the U.S. private sector workforce. The Fed typically received this data with about a one-week delay, making it a timely and comprehensive measure of labor market conditions. According to informed sources, after Federal Reserve Governor Waller delivered a speech at the end of August that drew public attention to the Fed's long-term use of ADP employment data, ADP stopped providing this data to the Fed. The specific reason for this change remains unclear. In Waller's speech, he cited ADP data in a footnote, further illustrating his concerns about the slowdown in the labor market. The footnote pointed out that preliminary estimates showed a continued deterioration in hiring conditions over the summer, and the data covered a period beyond the latest government data.