ADP National Employment Report: 33K Private Jobs Unexpectedly Lost in June

by Jennifer Nash, 7/2/25

The economic mover and shaker this week is Friday's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This monthly report contains a wealth of data for economists, the most publicized being the month-over-month change in Total Nonfarm Employment. The forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is that 110,000 jobs were added in June. However, each month a few days before we receive the highly anticipated jobs report, ADP releases their data on new nonfarm private jobs. The ADP employment report revealed that 33,000 nonfarm private jobs were unexpectedly lost in June, down from the 29,000 addition in May. This is the first monthly reduction since March 2023 when there was a decline of 53,000 jobs. The latest reading was lower than the expected 99,000 addition.

Here is a visualization of the two series over the past twelve months. There is no correlation between the ADP and BLS employment report.

Here is an excerpt from today's ADP report press release:

"Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month. Still, the slowdown in hiring has yet to disrupt pay growth."

Here is a snapshot of the monthly change in the ADP headline number since the company's earliest published data with the new methodology in 2010. This is quite a volatile series, so we've plotted the monthly data points as dots along with a six-month moving average, which gives us a clearer sense of the trend. The latest six-month moving average is 79,000, the lowest level in nearly five years.

As we see in the chart above, the trend peaked in September 2015 and then went negative for the first time in late 2019, just before the NBER declared a recession start. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought employment numbers down to levels we have never seen this century. The trend reached a new high in 2021 at 875,000 and has recently dropped back to pre-pandemic levels.

ADP Employment: Industry

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into two categories: Goods Producing and Service Providing. The US is predominantly a services economy, so it comes as no surprise that Services employment has shown stronger jobs growth. It makes sense that service-producing employment has plummeted during the pandemic for a couple of reasons - our economy is mostly supported by service-producing jobs, and during the pandemic, those same services were brought to a halt. In June, goods-producing jobs rose by 32,000 while service-providing jobs lost 66,000.

The sector with the largest growth in June was Leisure & Hospitality with a gain of 32,000. The biggest loser last month was Professional & Business Services with a loss of 56,000 jobs followed by Educational & Health Services with a loss of 52,000.

The next chart is a linear representation of each industry's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Region

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into nine regions (census divisions). The region with the largest growth in June was the East South Central region, with a gain of 20,000 private jobs. Meanwhile, the West North Central region experienced the largest loss at -28,000.

The next chart is a linear representation of each region's contribution to overall employment from the start of the series.

ADP Employment: Establishment Size

ADP also gives us a breakdown of Total Nonfarm Private Employment into five sizes. Establishments with 500+ employees saw the largest growth in June, gaining 30,000 jobs while those with 1-19 employees experienced the largest loss at -29,000.