U.S. private employers added 90,000 jobs in September, a sharp acceleration from August and stronger than economists expected, as hiring rebounded after three months of slowing growth.
The September ADP National Employment Report, released Wednesday, showed private-sector employment rising by 90,000 after August’s increase was revised down to 36,000 from an initially reported 38,000. Economists surveyed by Reuters ahead of the report had expected an increase of 70,000.
That means September hiring exceeded the Reuters consensus by 20,000 jobs and was 54,000 stronger than the revised August reading. The acceleration is also a clearer labor-market signal than the preliminary ADP data Investozora covered earlier in September, when ADP’s weekly payroll measure showed hiring running near 20,000 jobs per week.
The gains were concentrated in several industries. Education and health services added 55,000 jobs, leisure and hospitality added 22,000, manufacturing gained 17,000 and construction added 15,000, according to ADP. Financial activities lost 16,000 positions, while professional and business services shed 11,000.
Goods-producing employers added 31,000 jobs overall and service providers added 59,000.
The composition matters because the headline rebound was not broad across every major industry. Education and health services alone accounted for about 61% of the net September increase, an Investozora calculation based on ADP’s 55,000 sector gain and 90,000 total increase.
At the same time, two major white-collar categories, financial activities and professional and business services, together lost 27,000 jobs. Hiring also varied sharply by region. The Northeast added 56,000 jobs, compared with 17,000 in the West, 11,000 in the South and 5,000 in the Midwest.
Pay growth remained relatively steady. ADP reported that median base pay increased 3.2% from a year earlier across workers in its Pay Insights data. Base pay rose 3.0% for workers who stayed in their jobs and 4.8% for people who changed jobs. Gross pay increased 4.7% overall.
The report adds a stronger hiring signal to a labor-market picture that has otherwise been mixed. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS report showed job openings at about 7.1 million in August, down 256,000 from July, while hires were little changed at 5.2 million. Investozora’s analysis of the 256,000 decline in August job openings provides the broader demand-side context.
The ADP number also arrives after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest-rate target by a quarter percentage point in September. In its September 16 FOMC statement, the Fed said job gains had kept pace with the workforce and the unemployment rate had changed little, while inflation remained elevated. The stronger ADP reading gives policymakers another current measure of private hiring, but it does not by itself establish what the Fed will do at its October meeting.
There is also an important limit to the report. ADP says its National Employment Report is an independent measure based on anonymized payroll information covering more than 26 million U.S. private-sector employees and is not intended to forecast the government’s monthly payroll report. The two reports use different data and methodologies.
That distinction makes Friday’s government employment report the next major test. The BLS release calendar schedules the September Employment Situation for 8:30 a.m. ET on October 2. Unlike ADP, the government report will provide the broader nonfarm payroll figure, unemployment rate and additional labor-market measures.
Until then, September’s ADP data establish one thing clearly: private hiring accelerated materially from August. Whether the government’s broader employment data confirm the same improvement remains unresolved.
