ADP Puts August Private Payroll Growth at 38,000, Below the 48,000 Economists Expected

by Tomas Ferreira · September 2, 2026

Markets Reporter, US Market Current

Private employers in the United States added 38,000 jobs in August, ADP said Wednesday morning in a report published at 8:15 a.m. Eastern. The figure landed roughly 10,000 short of the 48,000 gain Fox Business reported economists had expected; Fox Business did not name the organisation that compiled that consensus. ADP's own release does not characterise August against earlier months, but trade coverage of the report, including StockTitan's, described it as the slowest pace of private job creation since January.

ADP also nudged its July estimate higher, to 46,000 from the 44,000 it originally reported a month ago. Even after that revision, the two-month run represents a marked cooling from the pace of hiring the series showed earlier in the year.

The composition of the August number is arguably more instructive than the headline. Goods-producing industries subtracted 10,000 jobs on net. Manufacturing was the single largest drag, shedding 17,000 positions, and natural resources and mining gave back another 5,000. Construction ran the other way, adding 12,000.

Service-providing industries added 48,000, but the gain was narrow rather than broad. Education and health services alone accounted for 45,000 of it, more than the 38,000 net gain across the whole private sector. Leisure and hospitality contributed 16,000, and financial activities and other services added 6,000 apiece. Set against those gains, professional and business services cut 16,000 jobs, trade, transportation and utilities cut 5,000, and information cut 4,000.

Small and mid-sized employers pulled back

ADP's breakdown by establishment size shows the month's hiring was concentrated at the largest firms. Companies with 500 or more employees added 34,000 jobs. The smallest establishments, those with one to 19 employees, added 20,000. Everything in between was flat to negative: firms with 20 to 49 employees cut 17,000 positions, those with 50 to 249 added just 2,000, and those with 250 to 499 subtracted 2,000.

Regionally, the Northeast supplied 38,000 of the net gain on its own. The Midwest added 5,000 and the South added 3,000, while the West lost 8,000 jobs.

Pay growth split between stayers and switchers

The report's pay data, drawn from matched-person records rather than an establishment survey, continued to show a wide gap between workers who stayed put and those who moved. Median base pay for job-stayers rose 3.0 percent from a year earlier, ADP said, while median base pay for job-changers rose 4.7 percent. On a gross basis, which folds in bonuses, commissions and tips, the median for job-stayers was up 4.4 percent and for job-changers 7.3 percent. Across all workers, ADP put median base pay growth at 3.2 percent and median gross pay growth at 4.7 percent.

Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, framed the pay series as the interpretive key to an uneven labor market, saying that pay can tell us a lot about today's choppy hiring and that understanding hiring patterns requires looking closely at where pay growth is accelerating, where it is slowing, and for whom.

What the report is, and is not

The ADP National Employment Report is an estimate of private-sector employment change derived from anonymized payroll data covering ADP's own client base. It excludes government employment entirely, uses a different reference methodology than the federal survey, and has repeatedly diverged from the Bureau of Labor Statistics count in both direction and magnitude. It should not be read as a forecast of Friday's official figure.

That official figure is the August Employment Situation, which the BLS has scheduled for release on Friday, September 4, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. The July report, published last month, showed total nonfarm payrolls down 23,000 on the month against an average monthly gain of 34,000 over the prior year, an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, and average hourly earnings up 3.2 percent from a year earlier. That same release cut a combined 103,000 jobs from the previously reported May and June totals, revising May down 66,000 and June down 37,000.

The Federal Reserve is also due to publish its Beige Book, the district-by-district survey of anecdotal business conditions, later today: the central bank's publication schedule lists September 2 as the release date for the current edition, and as of midday the schedule page carried no link to it. It will be the last such compilation before the Federal Open Market Committee's September meeting, with the next edition scheduled for October 14.

Equities had already given ground the session before ADP's release. The S&P 500 closed Tuesday, September 1, at 7,631.47, down 0.71 percent on the day, with the Nasdaq Composite finishing at 26,099.77, off 1.03 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 52,766.88, down 0.79 percent, and the Russell 2000 at 2,920.13, lower by 1.23 percent.