ADP National Employment Report: 62K Private Jobs Added in April

by Jennifer Nash, 4/30/25

The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment. The forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is that 129,000 jobs were added in April. However, each month a few days before we receive the highly anticipated jobs report, ADP releases their data on new nonfarm private jobs. The ADP employment report revealed that 62,000 nonfarm private jobs were added in April, down from 147,000 in March. The latest reading was lower than the expected 114,000 addition.

Here is a visualization of the two series over the past twelve months. There is no correlation between the ADP and BLS employment report.

Here is an excerpt from today's ADP report press release:

"Unease is the word of the day. Employers are trying to reconcile policy and consumer uncertainty with a run of mostly positive economic data. It can be difficult to make hiring decisions in such an environment."

Here is a snapshot of the monthly change in the ADP headline number since the company's earliest published data with the new methodology in 2010. This is quite a volatile series, so we've plotted the monthly data points as dots along with a six-month moving average, which gives us a clearer sense of the trend. The latest six-month moving average is 143,000.

As we see in the chart above, the trend peaked in September 2015 and then went negative for the first time in late 2019, just before the NBER declared a recession start. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought employment numbers down to levels we have never seen this century. The trend reached a new high in 2021 at 875,000 and has recently dropped back to pre-pandemic levels.

ADP Employment: Industry

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into two categories: Goods Producing and Service Providing. The US is predominantly a services economy, so it comes as no surprise that Services employment has shown stronger jobs growth. It makes sense that service-producing employment has plummeted during the pandemic for a couple of reasons - our economy is mostly supported by service-producing jobs, and during the pandemic, those same services were brought to a halt. In April, goods-producing jobs rose by 26,000 while service-providing jobs added 34,000.

The sector with the largest growth in April was Leisure & Hospitality with a gain of 27,000. The biggest loser last month was Education & Health Services with a loss of 23,000 jobs.

The next chart is a linear representation of each industry's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Region

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into nine regions (census divisions). The region with the largest growth in April was the East South Central, with a gain of 54,000 private jobs. Meanwhile, the West South Central region experienced the largest loss at -43,000.

The next chart is a linear representation of each region's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Establishment Size

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into five sizes. Establishments with 50-249 employees saw the largest growth in April with a gain of 21,000 private jobs while those with 20-49 employees experienced the largest loss at -9,000.