After a significant setback in September hiring at small businesses, the jobs situation appeared to be stabilizing in October, according to payroll figures from CBIZ.
The CBIZ Small Business Employment Index, which measures hiring trends for more than 3,500 companies with 300 or fewer employees, shrunk 0.89 percent in October, following a bigger decrease of 2.55 percent in September.
“Although the actual SBEI metric shows a decline of 0.89 percent, the number of companies hiring exceeded those decreasing employment,” CBIZ Payroll Services business unit president Philip Noftsinger said in a statement. “At a minimum, we can view this month’s numbers as stable in terms of small business employment levels, but the number of firms hiring is encouraging.”
CBIZ manages payroll services for more than 3,500 businesses. Of the companies surveyed by ADP, 25 percent increased their staffing, while 24 percent of the companies decreased their employee headcounts. Fifty-one percent of the companies surveyed maintained their current number of employees.
A critical issue is the ability of Washington to deal with the pending fiscal cliff and remove uncertainty from the marketplace, CBIZ noted. CBIZ anticipates that if companies continue to see growth in demand as well as a resolution to the fiscal cliff, there is a strong chance of positive movement in employment during the fourth quarter.
“Businesses want longer term predictability, similar to what the Fed chairman is projecting with regard to interest rates,” said Noftsinger. “Small business owners are more adept at long-term planning than they were pre-recession, and they are not motivated by short-term solutions to major economic issues and the volatility they present.”
3 Comments
doesn't appear that they are comparable at all. I'll be real interested in their October figures. At the moment it appears to me to be a little piece of news that should be ignored. I'm more interested in seeing why the government's own numbers and ADP's sometimes are pretty far apart. Much more relevant sample size.
Posted by: topbeancounter | November 9, 2012 10:34 AM
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Hi, Tom, we published a story on the ADP numbers here: http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/ADP-Gains-Financial-Sector-Hiring-64554-1.html
The numbers aren't exactly comparable because ADP is now breaking out the numbers for two sizes of small businesses, with small businesses with 1 to 19 employees adding 18,000 jobs, while small businesses with 20 to 49 employees adding 32,000 jobs in October. CBIZ, on the other hand, is only reporting percentage gains or losses in its Small Business Employment Index, but not the number of jobs gained or lost.
Posted by: MikeCohn | November 6, 2012 10:11 AM
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How does this reconcile with ADP figures, which are based on a much, much larger sample size (I think it's 400,000, but not certain about that)? They said there was growth in Sept in excess of 100,000 and CBIZ says there wasn't. Are there some GOP folks writing this script? I would expect better from the only (I think) major independent accounting publication left in this country.
Although I'm no fan of ADP, it appears to me that CBIZ might want to check out what every other service has to say before they put out numbers that make them look just like the beancounters they are. And you guys print it? Shame on both of you.
Posted by: topbeancounter | November 6, 2012 9:41 AM
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