Strome Business Minute With Dr. Jeff Tanner

I’m Jeff Tanner, Dean of the Strome College of Business, and this is a Strome Business Minute. ADP recently released payroll numbers, stating that 167,000 jobs were added to the private sector payrolls this past month, well below the 1.9 million that were expected based on a survey of economists by Econoday and a forecast of one million from Dow Jones. The wide variance in forecasts and the actual outcome point out the challenges in making any predictions in this turbulent economic time. Almost all of the new jobs were from service providers and mid-size companies actually lost twenty five thousand jobs. The government unemployment numbers will be released Friday, but ADP’s estimates have generally tracked government numbers fairly well, even though they are developed using different methods. The lack of job growth will certainly add urgency to stimulus talks. This has been a Strome Business Minute, presented by the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University.