Job creation at U.S. private companies in October barely ticked upward, with payroll processor ADP reporting an increase of just 42,000 positions. This modest uptick, released Wednesday, marks the first advance in ADP’s figures since July, following a 29,000 job decrease in September. However, the data suggests hiring remains sluggish despite a slight improvement over some previous months.
The gains were largely confined to specific service-driven industries, with education and health care collectively adding 26,000 jobs, and trade, transportation, and utilities contributing another 47,000. By contrast, manufacturing recorded a loss of 3,000 jobs, and the professional and business services sector shed 15,000 positions.
Larger companies, those employing more than 500 people, were primarily responsible for last month’s job growth, while small businesses continued to see declines in employment levels.
Despite the increase, the broader jobs landscape continues to be defined by stagnation. Layoffs remain limited, and most companies are neither aggressively hiring nor reducing headcount—a situation several analysts have described as “no hiring, no firing.”
ADP’s monthly report exclusively tracks private sector employment, omitting public sector jobs, and provides a crucial perspective as official government labor data remains unavailable amid an ongoing government shutdown.
