Overview
- Private payrolls rose by 41,000 in December, short of roughly 47,000–48,000 expectations, after a revised 29,000 decline in November.
- Service industries led hiring, with education and health adding 39,000 and leisure and hospitality up 24,000, while professional and business services fell 29,000, information dropped 12,000, and manufacturing lost 5,000.
- Smaller employers drove the gains as large companies added only 2,000 jobs.
- Wage growth remained muted, with job stayers up 4.4% year over year and job changers up 6.6%.
- Produced with Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, the ADP measure arrives before the official BLS report, and alongside a November drop in job openings it points to a cooling labor market that analysts say may keep the Fed on hold near term.