ADP Reports 38,000 Private Sector Jobs Added
ADP National Employment Report shows 38,000 private-sector jobs added in August, alongside expanded pay data for 56 metro areas.
ADP reported that U.S. private-sector employers added 38,000 jobs in August, its slowest pace of job creation since January. The ADP National Employment Report, produced by ADP Research with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, also showed base pay rising 3.2% and gross pay rising 4.7% year over year. The company has expanded its Pay Insights report with data for 56 U.S. metropolitan areas and an interactive platform.
Hiring Concentrated in Services
Education and health services added 45,000 jobs in August, followed by leisure and hospitality with 16,000 and construction with 12,000. Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs, while professional and business services lost 16,000.
Large establishments with 500 or more employees added 34,000 jobs. Small establishments added 3,000 jobs, while medium establishments recorded no overall change.
Dr. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said:
“Pay can tell us a lot about today's choppy hiring. To understand hiring patterns, you have to look deeply into where pay growth is accelerating, where it's slowing, and for whom.”
Pay Data Adds New Measures
ADP Pay Insights now separates base pay, drawn from contracted pay rates, from gross pay, which includes bonuses, commissions, tips, and other earnings. The report covers all workers as well as job-stayers and job-changers.
Base pay for job-stayers rose 3.0% year over year, compared with 4.7% for job-changers. Gross pay rose 4.4% for job-stayers and 7.3% for job-changers.
Liv Wang, lead data scientist at ADP Research, said:
“With its extended history, added dimensions of base pay and distribution, and granular metro information, Pay Insights more fully captures the pay structure of the U.S. labor market and how it's changing over time.”
A Broader Monthly Labor View
The employment report uses anonymized weekly payroll data from more than 26 million private-sector employees. Pay Insights compares individual workers’ wage growth over 12-month intervals, creating more than 14.7 million year-over-year pay-change observations each month.
The July total was revised from 44,000 jobs added to 46,000. The next report is scheduled for September 30, 2026, at 8:15 a.m. ET.
