Private sector employment increased by 174,000 jobs from December to January according to the January according to the December ADP National Employment Report®. … The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis.
“The labor market continues its slow recovery amid COVID-19 headwinds,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Although job losses were previously concentrated among small and midsized businesses, we are now seeing signs of the prolonged impact of the pandemic on large companies as well.”
emphasis added
This was well above the consensus forecast of 45,000 for this report.
The BLS report will be released Friday, and the consensus is for 50 thousand non-farm payroll jobs added in January. Of course the ADP report has not been very useful in predicting the BLS report.