Carlos A. Rodriguez - Automatic Data Processing, Inc.
Management
Jan, I think to add to that, I think we have some historical data to support Jan's points like, obviously, we don't have any historical data to really be able to ascertain what's happening, what month and with what regulation. But the first point about the economy is indisputable that when ADP is obviously a very – from a recurring revenue model standpoint on our revenues and our profitability and so forth a relatively defensive steady company, but new business bookings is a little bit different. And when you look at 20 years of data, our new business bookings growth over the course of rolling four quarters because obviously any one quarter can have issues like we just experienced. We can have a new regulation that requires a new product. We had for example Y2K 20 years ago but, in general, follows very, very closely almost a smooth line what's happening with the economy, as does our pays per control growth. So our pays per control growth when unemployment is going up, tends to go down and vice versa. So we are in new business bookings, I think, somewhat tied to the strength of the economy and so, as Jan said – and we are, obviously, we try to be as transparent as possible. We were sitting here talking about potentially entering a recession. We would have to, I think, temper our optimism based on that 20 years of history. But since that doesn't appear to be the environment that we're entering at least for now, we feel that we're going to rely on this historical data and I think plan on returning to historical growth rates in our new business, and our new business bookings. In terms of this issue of the specific regulations and change and so forth, there's also a lot of history in ADP. There's more than 20 years of history where even though there are bumps along the road in terms of the amount of regulation and the type of regulation, in general the trajectory has been in one direction. And that's a global statement, not just a U.S. statement because governments try to effect public policy through employment and through employers, whether it's around safety, or taxes, or a variety of healthcare in this case. And so we like where we are, we like the space we operate in, and we're optimistic about, I think, the future, although obviously, we're not exactly happy about what's happening in the short term here.