Private sector adds 143K jobs

Private sector employment increased by 143,000 jobs in September, while annual pay rose 4.7% year-over-year, payroll giant ADP reported.

The ADP National Employment Report, released last Wednesday, found that the service-providing sector added 101,000 jobs last month, including 20,000 in professional and business services such as accounting and tax preparation. The goods-producing sector gained 42,000 jobs, including 26,000 in construction.

Small businesses with between one and 19 employees lost 13,000 jobs in September, while those with between 20 and 49 employees gained 5,000 jobs. Midsized establishments added 64,000 jobs, including 49,000 in businesses with between 50 and 249 employees, and 15,000 in businesses with between 250 and 499 employees. Large establishments with 500 employees or more gained 86,000 jobs,

Year-over-year pay gains for those who stayed at their jobs fell slightly in September to 4.7%. For job-changers the decline was greater, falling from 7.3% in August to 6.6%. For professional and business services, the rate for job stayers was 4.6%.

“Worker sentiment is the second highest we’ve seen  on record,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson during a conference call with reporters. “Not only has the quantity of jobs changed over the last three years, and the pay growth has changed, but also the workplace has changed. There’s more hybrid work. There’s more flexibility in jobs. People have switched, have quit and started jobs over the last three years, and there seems to be more stability in where workers are now. Not only are we seeing a labor market that is still solid, we’re seeing a workplace that has become more flexible for workers over the last three years. That might mean that we are seeing some stability in the turnover, and that could characterize the next three months of 2024: facility, stable growth, lower wage premiums, less likelihood of quitting, but still some solid hiring.”

That was reflected in last Friday’s jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed that employment increased by a robust 254,000 in September, including 2,000 more in accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services. The unemployment rate fell one-tenth of a point to 4.1%. Revisions to the numbers for July and August showed 72,000 more jobs were added than previously reported.

Separately, ADP Research also recently reported a decline in wage garnishments. ADP Research analyzed ADP payroll data representing more than 57 million people between November 2018 and February 2024 and found the wage garnishment rate peaked in March 2020 at 3.9%. A month later, it began to fall dramatically. By January 2024, the garnishment rate was 2.8%.

The biggest driver of this epic drop was student loans, with student loan garnishments beginning to fall in March 2020, pushing the rate from 0.45% to near zero. The U.S. Department of Education’s Fresh Start program put a full stop to student loan garnishments in April 2022. More than half of the drop in the garnishment rate in 2020, from 3.9% in March to 3.1% in December, was due to a 0.4 percentage-point drop in the student loan garnishment rate, which fell from 0.5% to near zero.