• Private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, slightly below September's initially reported 90,000 gain but above some consensus estimates.
  • Services drove nearly all the hiring, adding 82,000 positions, while goods-producing industries contributed just 4,000.
  • Professional and business services shed 27,000 jobs, highlighting a persistent weak spot in the labor market.

Resilient Hiring, But Not Broad-Based

US private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, according to the latest ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) National Employment Report released on Tuesday. The figure marks a second consecutive month of solid hiring growth, following September’s initially reported gain of 90,000, though it remains below the pace needed to signal a dramatic acceleration. The result exceeded the 69,000 consensus cited in one pre-release market preview, offering a positive surprise relative to that benchmark.

The headline number suggests a labor market that is still expanding but increasingly reliant on a narrow set of industries. Services accounted for roughly 95% of net hiring, adding 82,000 jobs, while goods-producing industries contributed a mere 4,000. Within services, trade and transportation led with 39,000 new positions, but professional and business services contracted by 27,000—a significant pocket of weakness that also appeared in September’s official data, when that category fell by 11,000. The back-to-back declines indicate that the difficulties in professional and business services predate October and may be deepening.

Wage Growth Steady, Job Switchers Gain More

Pay growth held steady in October. Base pay rose 3.2% year over year, unchanged from September, while gross pay increased 4.7%. For those who changed jobs, gross-pay growth accelerated to 7.6% from 7.3% in September, suggesting that employers are still willing to pay up for new hires—though ADP measures year-over-year changes for tracked workers, so the figure should not be interpreted as a guaranteed raise from switching.

The steady wage readings suggest that the labor market is not generating fresh inflationary pressure through pay. For financial markets, the competing interpretations are familiar: continued hiring supports household income and reduces immediate recession concerns, but resilient employment can also lessen the urgency for monetary easing. The Federal Reserve, which held its policy-rate range at 3.75%–4.00% on October 28, has signaled that future decisions will depend on incoming data. October’s continued hiring adds to the employment side of that debate without resolving the inflation question.

A Second Look at the Numbers

ADP’s report is an independent measure of the labor market, not a forecast of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ broader payroll report, which is scheduled for release on November 6 and includes government employment. ADP redesigned its methodology in 2022 with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using anonymized payroll records covering more than 26 million workers. A preliminary weekly update from ADP had shown average gains of 16,750 jobs for the four weeks ending October 10 and noted that hiring had slowed for a second week—a softer signal that is not directly interchangeable with the monthly total.

The near-term question is whether official data will corroborate this resilience. Over the coming months, economists will watch whether services hiring broadens, whether professional-services losses persist, and whether wage growth changes direction. Those developments will help distinguish a durable, moderate expansion from a recovery dependent on a narrow set of industries.

Correction: November 4, 2025 — An earlier version of this article misstated the September job-changers’ gross-pay growth rate. It was 7.3%, not 7.6%.