Domestic employment is sharply down recently, according to this article. Does this sound like we have all this extra work to give away to immigrants and foreign workers overseas? Maybe we'd better look out for our own first.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/4 ... B40AE5A%7D

40,000 jobs lost in December, ADP reports

Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last Update: 8:16 AM ET Jan 3, 2007

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. private-sector employment fell by 40,000 in December, the first decline in nearly four years, according to the ADP employment report released Wednesday.

"These findings suggest an abrupt slowing of employment," following relatively strong job growth averaging 121,1000 over the past three years," said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomics Advisers, the economic firm that computes the ADP index from anonymous payroll data provided by Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP : Automatic Data
The last time the ADP report showed a decline in jobs was in April 2003, during the pre-war economic slump.

The ADP report's results are in sharp contrast to the upbeat projections of economists for the government's nonfarm payroll survey to be released on Friday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch are expecting payrolls - both public- and private-sector - to grow by about 103,000 for December.

Together with an estimated 15,000 or so additional government jobs that aren't included in the ADP index, the report suggests nonfarm payrolls likely fell by about 25,000 in December. That would be the first decline since July 2003.

The ADP report is considered by some to be the best single predictor of the government's nonfarm payroll report, but its record has been spotty since being rolling out in public in April.

The ADP report got it wrong in June, when it forecast private-sector gains of 368,000, while the government report showed just 107,000 new jobs created in the private sector and an additional 27,000 government jobs.
The ADP sample is taken during the same week of the month as the government survey, using similar techniques on anonymous sample data from about 250,000 business sites covering about 17 million workers. Roseland, N.J.-based ADP provides payroll and human-resources services to about one of every six U.S. workers, at more than 500,000 companies
The ADP index is constructed to mirror the government report in coverage of industries, firm size and region.

The ADP index will be expanded in the next few months to include a larger sample size and to provide a breakdown into goods-producing and service-producing jobs.

Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch