I’m not a huge fan of The ADP National Employment Report (pdf here). It doesn’t provide much of a sneak peek on employment data. It excludes government jobs, so it’s not a very complete picture. It’s more of an alternative perspective. So take this with a grain of salt.

The release for March isn’t very positive:

Nonfarm private employment decreased 23,000 from February to March on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from January 2010 to February 2010 was revised down slightly, from a decline of 20,000 to a decline of 24,000.

The March employment decline was the smallest since employment began falling in February of 2008. Yet, the lack of improvement in employment from February to March is consistent with the pause in the decline of initial unemployment claims that occurred during the winter.

Now, it’s not really fair to say that the March decline was the smallest if you had to revise February to make it happen. Who’s to say you won’t revise March lower?

Small, medium, and large businesses all shed jobs in March. Service-providing industries added jobs in all size categories while goods-producing industries shed jobs in all size categories.

The stock market will be closed on Friday, but the Employment Situation report will be released on the normal schedule. The Bloomberg consensus is 200,000 new jobs (range is 75,000 to 300,000). I’d like to point out that census hiring alone is 800,000 jobs for the months of March and April, so depending on how that hiring plan breaks down, we’d better get some monthly gains.

If the ADP report is any indicator (a debatable assertion), all of our expected gains in employment will be the result of Census hiring. Yay Census.