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The stock market has been up so far in September, a somewhat unusual event for the weakest month in stocks. The optimism is propelled largely by decent news on jobs, with weekly initial unemployment claims dropping to their lowest level since 2008 at 323k. But the big news was the ADP Employment Report, which came in at 176k jobs gained in August. Investors are still watching for the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on Friday – but they don’t need to.

What is this ADP Employment Report, and what does it mean? It’s actually the best barometer of where we are, if not the official one, and it comes with a lot of useful information that can’t be found anywhere else. Since we’ve dissected the official BLS report it’s time to take a good look at the ADP numbers – and why they are in many ways much more interesting.

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This is the time of year to look back and reflect. What happened in 2012? A lot of things happened, and yet when we look at the political and economic situation it appears that almost nothing happened at all. About US 1.6M jobs were added during the year, but growth (change in GDP) remains at a near-recession 2% or less. Politically, the election produced the same President and Congress who remain mired in gridlock, currently unable to get out of the “Fiscal Cliff” trap of their own making. Europe has gone from bad to somewhat worse, proving that austerity isn’t going to help anyone.

What should we make of this year? Not much, really. There was not a big story in politics or economics that is worth re-hashing. But there is a small story that has not been told. Where did those 1.6M jobs come from, anyway?

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