Today, Automatic Data Processing, or ADP, which processes payrolls for private companies, said that the private sector added 55,000 jobs to payroll in May --
“„We lost 8 million new jobs since we hit the skids. … It’s going to take us several years to get back to that number.
“„Here’s what I can tell you. I predicted — and I got in trouble for predicting this, but I turned out to be right, as I might very vainfully point out — that we’re going to be creating jobs … by the middle of the end of the first quarter [of 2010]. We are. We continue to create jobs. **And I predict that we would create 250,000 jobs last month; we actually created 280,000 jobs. I think we’ll create between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs [per month] on average all the way through this year, increasing it next year beyond that. **
“„The answer to that question is unknowable for [a few] reasons. One: We don’t know what’s going to happen in Europe…[Two:] We also have never been able to accurately measure what is the ultimate engine of this economic growth — consumer confidence. My mantra with our economic team is, and they just think I’m an optimist, America caught every bad break ont eh way down. It’s time we catch some good breaks on the way up. Just a change in consumer confidence and their willingess to go out and spend can significantly increase and change the rapidity with which we bring down that unemployment rate.