The ADP National Employment Report, reported by the payroll processor, indicated that private nonfarm payroll growth improved sharply to 130,000 in January from a revised 37,000 worker advance in December.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figure for January will be published this coming Friday.Last month, the 37,000 gain ADP's measure of private nonfarm payrolls was followed by a decline of 13,000 in the BLS measure of private nonfarm payrolls.

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 sub-index for large payrolls nudged up 8,000 after a 35,000 worker collapse during December

Medium sized payrolls showed great improvement by 52,000 after a 5,000 December increase.

Growth in small payrolls of 70,000 was near the very recent rate but there has been a halving of the annual growth rate over the last three years.

Employment in the goods producing industries continued to decline (-1.7% y/y) while services rose (1.5% y/y).

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.

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.