The ADP Nat'l Employment Report, reported by the payroll processor, indicated that private nonfarm payrolls declined 40,000 last month. It was the first decline since April 2003. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figure will be published this Friday.

Last month, ADP's measure of private nonfarm payrolls for November indicated a 158,000 rise in jobs that was followed by a BLS report that private nonfarm payrolls rose 114,000.

ADP compiled the estimate from its database of individual companies' payroll information. Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, the St. Louis economic consulting firm, developed the methodology for transforming the raw data into an economic indicator.

According to ADP and Macro Advisers, the correlation between the monthly percentage change in the ADP estimate and that in the BLS data is 0.90.

The ADP National Employment Report data is maintained in Haver's USECON database; historical data go back to December 2000. The figures in this report cover only private sector jobs and exclude employment in the public sector, which rose an average 11,083 during the last twelve months.

The full ADP National Employment Report can be found here, and the ADP methodology is explained here.