ADP reports the total YOY small business growth as +19,000.
The ADP® National Employment Report for August shows a gain of only 54,000 private jobs.
The year started with strong job growth, but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty. A variety of things could explain the hiring slowdown, including labor shortages, skittish consumers, and AI disruptions.
ADP Change in Employment by Employer Size Month-Over-Month
The total private gain in August is 54,000.
The total private gain for employer size 20-49 for all of 2025 is -12,000.
ADP Change in Small, Medium, Large Employment Year-Over-Year
Change in Small, Medium, Large Employment Details
- Small: 19,000
- Medium, 264,000
- Large: 781,000
That is a total of 1.064 million, about 89,000 per month and declining fast.
The year-over-year change in businesses from 20-49 employees went negative in June of 2024. It’s been negative most of the months since.
This is a big deal because small businesses account for a larger share of employment.
Current Employment by Business Size
QCEW Report Shows Overstatement of Jobs by the BLS is Increasing
On June 16, I noted QCEW Report Shows Overstatement of Jobs by the BLS is Increasing
The discrepancy between QCEW and the BLS jobs report is rising.
The QCEW consists of 12.2 million establishments in the first quarter of 2024. The BLS nonfarm payroll report has a sample size of 629,000 individual worksites in 2024.
The Unemployment Level Is Now Greater than Job Openings
Yesterday, I noted The Unemployment Level Is Now Greater than Job Openings
For the first time since the pandemic unemployment is above openings.
The nonfarm payroll response rate is 42.6 percent with the same issues as with JOLTS
The large increase in minimum wage has battered small business. Even large corporations have been negatively influenced and look to replace workers with automation. A long-term chart of business employment growth vs minimum wage would be interesting. King Soopers and Albertson’s workers recently received wage and benefit increases after a short strike. While waiting in line at Kings, at the one and only open register, the cashier said, management told them the budget for cashiers was already filled for the year.
August payrolls a joke?
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/05/jobs-report-august-2025.html
Oh wait, the joke’s on us for electing a dimwitted hillbilly to run the economy. Don’t worry, the numbers will be “massaged” to provide the right happy dear leader number soon enough.
I have heard claims that 1.6 million “Illegals” have been deported by ICE. If this is true, hiring should be on the rise. Yet, hiring is not replacing quits.
As usual claims by the Trump administration are false.
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Some time ago there was a news story that hiring of Americans was up and foreigners was down. There was a packing plant that was raided and illegals arrested. Almost 100 Americans applied to take the jobs lost.
Obviously, employment conditions have changed since those stories made the news. During Biden more foreigners were being hired than Americans. More foreign supply keeps American wages down. The foreign workers were paid less at the packing plant, than Americans would have been.
After adjustment it will be a loss of millions of jobs. US stats are fake.
A Wild Card for the Board Game Business: Trump’s TariffsTrade war uncertainty is forcing board and card game publishers in the United States to make tough decisions, putting the future of the industry in jeopardy.
Trump’s Tariffs Become a Wild Card for Board Game Makers – The New York Times (archive.ph)
Small and medium can be hurt badly with specific tariffs, but especially the small, as they are mostly ill equipped to handle many potential road blocks.
Illegals leaving small biz? Not hiring to replace because legals cost more?
Ah yes the famously run by illegals small businesses! The ones you have to prove your citizenship to own and run! You really are an economic mastermind Patrick, I’m shocked you don’t have your own blog.
I’m assuming he means the workers are illegals and working for cheap wages, not the owners.
Small businesses hiring illegals is definitely rampant here in Florida (even after the crackdown on them). Lots of them in construction, lawn care, marina’s, restaurants etc.
Small restaurants. Small construction companies. Family farming operations. Small landscaping companies.
If we want to talk about that, the problem is then who replaces them. It’s beneficial for no one to get rid of them as it is because nobody wants to work their jobs, especially not for an unlivable wage. Expecting people used to way better to just suddenly do these jobs with a smile is a great way to get your head in the guillotine.
Now let’s factor in demographic collapse to really kill this. As it stands, it’s too expensive for most people to have kids and maintain their quality of life. So they don’t. Take away the quality of life they’ve sacrificed so much for and again, violence. The baby boom busting means we need more people coming in to fill low end jobs while we work to get the middle class healthily having kids again. Anything else is a recipe for the economic collapse we’re now seeing, the aftermath of which will be a cratered middle class and widespread poverty as America collapses downward into a third world country where the wealthy leave and the poor are exploited by businesses from wealthier countries.
well, let’s see that happen then.We’ve been hearing this sky-will- fall arguments for decades. let’s let it play out. if it actually happens i am sure the policy will change real fast.
and yes, i agree, American citizens are not gettin jobs picking fruit in 100 degree weather, cutting meat at 50 degrees, or working the dishrooms in American’s millions of restaurants. But let’s see it happen.
You’re… Literally watching it happen right now? Like as of Mish’s latest post right now.
Aggregate stats matter to oligarchs, because they skim a percentage of the aggregate regardless of changes to population size.
For everyone else, aggregate stats do not matter. “per capita” stats matter.
Notice which type of stats the establishment talks about, almost to the exclusion of the other as though the concept doesn’t exist.
Small business doesn’t make the ultra rich any richer, so it’s not a priority. If anything, it steals from what rightfully belongs to the ultra rich.
Now that we have an ultra rich president, this is being corrected.
The Trump recession is unofficially here. I have been pinged by people I haven’t talked to in decades asking if I am hiring. Most people I speak to now are worried about losing their job. The situation is starting to get desperate out there. The job situation will get worse as we head into the holidays because no one wants to do interviews or process applications around Thanksgiving or Christmas / New Year holiday.
Considering all the boomer retiring and deportations happening, it’s telling that the job market is total trash right now. Whether the fed cuts or not won’t make a difference now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftrgUo1xv4
Trump & GOP will own this 100%.
Agreed, sounds extremely desperate. They don’t make ’em like they did a half century ago.
In tort law, there’s the concept of joint and several liability. Yes, blame “current management”. But not them alone. We’re talking about DECADES spent on elective wars, destroying other countries and taking in their refugees (sometimes begrudgingly), outsourcing work, insourcing labor, creating/worsening oligopolies in multiple industries, endless handouts to the 1% (TARP, QEx, multiple bank rescues”) without which the wealth gap would plummet, and surely more that you can all think of. Blame not just the current management but every one of them since the early 70’s when lower class wages stopped growing. Our problem isn’t a fleeting one stemming from management that can be changed in the next election. The “owners” or the system like it this way.
And while I wish there were some way to turn this around, I’m pessimistic PRECISELY because way too many people continue voting for uniparty candidates — which is “throwing away your vote” — because they believe voting for anyone else is “throwing away your vote”.
I still can’t get over how well that one simple meme works. With one meme, they keep everyone hostage. Or in zugzwang.
I would start feeling some “hope” only if that 95% of uniparty voters stops voting for the uniparty. But I have failed to convince a single one of my D or R friends to “stop digging”. So I expect this shitshow to worsen until the whole thing collapses.
We’re already in ww3. I suggest everyone stock up on supplies, grow a garden, raise chickens. I don’t own any guns but understand the urge.
If I had college-age kids, I’d encourage them to study in a BRICS member.
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
—Karl Marx, “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” (1851-52)
Nah they will just blame the dems And biden and the right will believe them. Maybe throw some obama in there for good measure.
Think the republican party funders ( the people really in charge)want to push poor Americans into those jobs the immigrants used to do.
Funny thing is that shift will happen as ai replaces educated jobs and the educated starts moving into the trades.
Clinton 100% owned the 2001 recession that occurred in March 2001, just after Bush took office. Was already baked in the cake before Bush. You never counted that as a Democrat recession, despite the fact it was.
As Mises said, a debt fueled bubble results in debt collapse or currency collapse. This is the Fourth Turning/Kondratieff Winter/Great Reset era. Neither Republican or Democrat is going to avoid it. Math just is.