ADP Reports Private Payrolls Increase by 38,000. BLS Reports Friday

The Econoday consensus for Friday is +55,000.

Private Employers Add 38,000 in August

ADP reports Private Employers Add 38,000 in August

• Private employers posted their slowest pace of job creation since January. Manufacturing, professional services, and information shed jobs.
• Education and health care, construction, and leisure and hospitality all showed solid hiring.
• Dr. Nela Richardson, Chief Economist, ADP: “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. Once-predictable wage growth has been overtaken by the complexities of demographic change, persistent inflation, and AI’s effects on jobs.”

ADP Change in Employment by Employer Size

ADP Change by Employer Size Detail

• 1-19: 20,000
• 20-49: -17,000
• 50-249: 2,000
• 250-499: -2,000
• 500+: 34,000
• Small: 3,000
• Medium: 0
• Large: 34,000

ADP vs BLS Private Payrolls

ADP offers little insight to BLS nonfarm payrolls on a month-over-month basis.

Over time, the series converge because both ADP and the BLS have significant revisions.

ADP vs Nonfarm Payrolls Change Year-Over-Year

In July 2026, ADP reported a year-over-year gain in private employment of 1.593 million.

The BLS reported 635,000. That’s a year-over year difference of 958,000.

But what numbers do you believe? My answer is neither of them.

QCEW Year-Over Year

The latest quarterly Census of Employment and wages (QCEW) give us a believable, but lagging set of numbers.

QCEW is through March of 2026. March 2025 was 154,686,000 and March 2026 was 154,772.

The year-over-year QCEW change is 86,000.

QCEW, ADP, BLS Year-Over-Year March 2026

• QCEW: 86,000
• ADP Private: 708,000
• BLS Private: 461,000
• BLS Nonfarm: 211,000

There is only one set of numbers above that you can have any faith in and that is the QCEW report.

ADP is miles high.

I will have a full QCEW report shortly.

Will the Fed Hike in September?

Unless the BLS report on Friday is miserable and the next CPI report is tame, the Fed is going to hike on September 16.

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