ADP® Reports Private Sector Employment and Compensation Gains in March

According to the ADP® National Employment Report™ released on Wednesday, private sector employment increased by 184,000 jobs in March and annual pay was up 5.1% year-over-year. This is the biggest jump in the private employment sector since July 2023, led by leisure and hospitality.

The ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab (“Stanford Lab”). The ADP National Employment Report is an independent measure and high-frequency view of the private sector labor market based on actual, anonymized payroll data of more than 25 million US employees. The report details the current month’s total private employment change, and weekly job data from the previous month. Because the underlying ADP payroll databases are continuously updated, the report provides near real-time measure of US employment. This measure reflects the number of employees on ADP client payrolls (Payroll Employment) to provide a richer understanding of the labor market. ADP’s pay measure uniquely captures the earning of a cohort of almost 10 million employes over a 12-month period.

Commenting on the jobs report, ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson said:

“March was surprising not just for the pay gains, but the sectors that recorded them. The three biggest increases for job-changers were in construction, financial services, and manufacturing. Inflation has been cooling, but our data shows pay is heating up in both goods and services.”