ADP National Employment Report: 77K Private Jobs Added in February

by Jennifer Nash, 3/5/25

The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment. The forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is that 156,000 jobs were added in February. However, each month a few days before we receive the highly anticipated jobs report, ADP releases their data on new nonfarm private jobs. The ADP employment report revealed that 77,000 nonfarm private jobs were added in February, the fewest amount since July. The latest reading was lower than the expected 141,000 addition.

Here is a visualization of the two series over the past twelve months. There is no correlation between the ADP and BLS employment report.

Here is an excerpt from today's ADP report press release:

“Policy uncertainty and a slowdown in consumer spending might have led to layoffs or a slowdown in hiring last month,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “Our data, combined with other recent indicators, suggests a hiring hesitancy among employers as they assess the economic climate ahead.”

Here is a snapshot of the monthly change in the ADP headline number since the company's earliest published data with the new methodology in 2010. This is quite a volatile series, so we've plotted the monthly data points as dots along with a six-month moving average, which gives us a clearer sense of the trend. The latest six-month moving average is 154,000, down from 167,000 in January.

As we see in the chart above, the trend peaked in September 2015 and then went negative for the first time in late 2019, just before the NBER declared a recession start. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought employment numbers down to levels we have never seen this century. The trend reached a new high in 2021 at 815,000 and has recently dropped back to pre-pandemic levels.

ADP Employment: Industry

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into two categories: Goods Producing and Service Providing. The US is predominantly a services economy, so it comes as no surprise that Services employment has shown stronger jobs growth. It makes sense that service-producing employment has plummeted during the pandemic for a couple of reasons - our economy is mostly supported by service-producing jobs, and during the pandemic, those same services were brought to a halt. In February, goods-producing jobs rose by 42,000 while service-providing jobs added 36,000.

The sector with the largest growth in February was Professional and Business Services with a gain of 27,000. The biggest loser last month was Trade, Transportation, and Utilities with a loss of 33,000 jobs.

The next chart is a linear representation of each industry's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Region

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into nine regions (census divisions). The region with the largest growth in February was the East North Central, with a gain of 45,000 private jobs. Meanwhile, the South Atlantic region experienced the largest loss (-26,000).

The next chart is a linear representation of each region's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Establishment Size

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into five sizes. Establishments with 500+ employees saw the largest growth in February with a gain of 37,000 private jobs while companies with 1-19 employees experienced a loss of 17,000.