Private job creation picked up in September after a brief slowdown, providing further indication that the U.S. labor market has stabilized, according to an ADP report Wednesday.
The payrolls processing firm said company employment rose by 90,000 for the month, higher than the downwardly revised 36,000 in August and better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 68,000.
There also was a fair amount of balance in the report, with service providers adding 59,000 positions while goods producers contributed 31,000.
Base pay rose 3.2% from a year ago, while gross pay accelerated by 4.7%.
“It’s a strong report,” said ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson. “After a three-month slowdown, job
creation rebounded and pay growth remained solid.”
Education and health services contributed the most, with 55,000 new hires. Other areas of growth included leisure and hospitality (22,000), manufacturing (17,000), and construction (15,000).
A handful of sectors saw job losses, including financial activities (-16,000), professional and business services (-11,000), and natural resources and mining (-1,000).
Much of the employment growth came from the Northeast, which added 56,000. By size, companies with between 50 and 499 workers saw a gain of 54,000.
Broadly, the report helped confirm sentiment expressed by multiple Federal Reserve officials that the labor market is mostly sound following a growth scare in 2025. Policymakers see the greater policy risk now as the persistent inflation that pushed central bankers to raise benchmark borrowing rates by a quarter percentage point earlier in September.
The ADP count serves as a precursor to the nonfarm payrolls report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release Friday. The Wall Street consensus is for a gain of 84,000 jobs, down from a 162,000 increase the prior month, and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.1%.
