ADP Employment Report

What Is the ADP Employment Report?

The ADP Employment Report is a monthly private-sector employment estimate based on payroll data from ADP, the largest US payroll-processing company. ADP's client base covers approximately 26 million workers — about 18% of US private-sector employment — and the company aggregates that payroll activity into a monthly employment-change estimate.

ADP partnered with Moody's Analytics from 2012-2022 to produce the report, then switched in 2022 to a partnership with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. The current methodology uses ADP payroll records plus a separate weekly indicator covering 75% of the workforce, designed to align more closely with the BLS NFP series.

Why It Matters for Markets

ADP lands on the Wednesday before the BLS NFP report, making it the closest leading indicator available for the most-watched macro release. Markets typically position around ADP results in anticipation of NFP, though the two reports diverge often enough that the directional read is more reliable than the level.

A weak ADP print can lower the expected NFP consensus going into Friday; a strong print does the opposite. The 2-year Treasury and the dollar index move on ADP releases, though by 30-50% the magnitude of the NFP reaction. The full reaction waits for Friday's BLS report to confirm or contradict.

How to Read the Print

Sector breakdown. ADP publishes employment change by industry (manufacturing, construction, professional services, leisure & hospitality, etc.) more granularly than NFP. This is useful for identifying which sectors are leading or lagging the broader labour market trend.

Small/medium/large business breakdown. ADP segments employment change by employer size, which provides early signals about credit conditions and small-business hiring dynamics.

Wage data. ADP publishes its Pay Insights data alongside the employment report, providing job-stayer and job-changer wage growth at higher frequency than the BLS quarterly Employment Cost Index.

Historical Context

ADP and NFP have tracked broadly similar trends over the past 20 years with month-to-month deviations of 50,000-150,000. During the pandemic, ADP and NFP diverged sharply in some months because ADP's methodology had to be adjusted for the unprecedented scale of layoffs and rehirings.

The 2024-2025 deceleration in private-sector employment showed up in ADP first, with the company's data signalling the cooling labour market 1-2 months before NFP confirmed the trend. Watching ADP and NFP together gives a more robust read on labour-market direction than relying on either alone.