Roseland-based ADP released its National Employment Report on Wednesday, revealing that U.S. private sector employment increased by 63,000 jobs in February. The data, produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, represents the strongest month for hiring since last summer.
Despite the uptick in headcount, the report highlights a cooling “job-hopper” economy. While annual pay for workers staying in their current roles rose 4.5%, the premium for switching employers hit a record low, suggesting that the era of massive raises for changing jobs may be coming to an end.
The hiring surge was not felt equally across the economy. Growth was heavily concentrated in the service sector, while some professional and manufacturing industries saw declines.
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Winners: Education and Health Services dominated the month, adding 58,000 jobs, followed by Construction with 19,000.
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Losers: Professional and Business Services shed 30,000 jobs, while Manufacturing saw a dip of 5,000.
“We’ve seen an increase in hiring and pay gains remain solid, especially for job-stayers,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP said. “But with hiring concentrated in only a few sectors, our data shows no widespread pay benefit from changing jobs.”
In a reversal of recent trends where large corporations led the labor market, small establishments (1–49 employees) were the primary engine of growth in February, adding 60,000 jobs. Meanwhile, medium-sized firms (50–499 employees) actually contracted, losing 7,000 positions.
While ADP is headquartered in the Northeast, the region saw a modest gain of 11,000 jobs. The true powerhouse for the month was the South, which added 37,000 positions, fueled largely by a hiring boom in the West South Central sub-region.
As one of the state’s largest and most influential employers, Roseland-based ADP utilizes anonymized payroll data from over 26 million U.S. employees to generate these insights. This “real-time” look at the labor market is often used by policymakers and investors to gauge the health of the American economy ahead of federal government reports.
