U.S. Economy Continues to Create Jobs

The November ADP National Employment Report reports that private sector employment increased by 307,000 jobs from October to November.

The ADP report which is published monthly by the ADP Research Institute with Moody’s Analytics, is based on active and paid employees on company payrolls. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counts workers as employed if they received a paycheck during the week that includes the 12th of the month.

While November saw employment gains, the pace continues to slow,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, Vice President and Co-Head of the ADP Research Institute. “Job growth remained positive across all industries and sizes.”

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private payrolls would rise by 410,000 in November. The slowdown in hiring last month was across all industries. “The broad message from the ADP report is consistent with what we expect the government data to show, the labor market continued to add jobs on net in November but the pace of job growth slowed,” said Daniel Silver, an Economist at JPMorgan in New York.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams acknowledged growth was slowing due to the spreading COVID-19 cases and lack of more fiscal stimulus, Reuters reported. That sentiment was also evident in the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book report which described the economic expansion as “modest or moderate.”

While the economy may be creating jobs at a slower pace, businesses continue to be challenged by a lack of skilled tech talent, said Harley Lippman, Genesis10 CEO. In an interview with the Kansas City Business Journal, he cited the “huge need” for tech talent pointing out that for every Java developer, there are four job postings, and for every .NET developer, there are 10 job postings in the Kansas City market.

The ADP report breaks down Total U.S. Nonfarm Private Employment by Sector and Company Size. All are worth reviewing each month (and tracking in a time series) to get a complete picture of what's happening and how job market conditions are trending in your business sector. Here are the highlights:

Small and Mid-Sized Businesses are Hiring

Small and mid-sized businesses hired the most workers in October, with small businesses (1-49 employees) adding 110,000 new jobs and mid-sized businesses (50-499 employees) adding 139,000. Larger businesses (1,000+ employees) added 58,000 workers.

Leisure/Hospitality Ticking Up

The service-providing sector created 276,000 jobs in October with the bulk of the jobs coming from the leisure/hospitality (95,000), education/health services (69,000) and professional/business services (55,000) sectors. None of the service sectors reported job losses in October.

Construction Adds Jobs Too

The goods-producing sector added 31,000 jobs to the economy, led by a boost in construction of 22,000 jobs. Manufacturing created 8,000, with natural resource/mining growing by 1,000.

The matched sample used to develop the ADP National Employment Report was derived from ADP payroll data, which represents 460,000 U.S. clients employing nearly 26 million workers in the U.S. The October total of jobs added was revised from 365,000 to 404,000.