ADP’s Employment Report showed that private sector job growth was weaker than economists had forecasted in December, as employers added 122,000 new jobs versus the 140,000 that were expected. This marked the lowest number of new jobs added in the private sector since August. The job growth that was previously reported for November (+146,000) was unrevised.
What’s the bottom line?
The bulk of hiring came from the services sector, which added 112,000 jobs, and from large businesseswith 500+ employees. Small businesses with less than 50 employees added 5,000 jobs. Though this was only a modest gain, it was an improvement over the losses that had been reported for small businesses in some recent prior months. Wage growth also moderated for both job-changers (+7.1% from +7.2%) and job-stayers (+4.6% from +4.8%) after an unexpected rise in November. Stayers saw the slowest pace of gains since July 2021.