US Companies Added 41,000 Jobs In December, ADP Says
Weakness in the labor market has been top of mind for Federal Reserve officials who cut interest rates three straight times to close out 2025.
Hiring at US companies rose in December at a moderate pace, pointing to sluggish momentum heading into 2026.
Private-sector payrolls increased by 41,000, according to ADP Research data released Wednesday, after declining in the prior month. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 50,000 gain.
The report adds to evidence of a gradually cooling, but not rapidly deteriorating, labor market. Hiring has been tepid recently and unemployment has risen, which is weighing on not only economists’ forecasts heading into the new year, but also Americans’ own views of their employment prospects.
Gains were led by education and health services as well as leisure and hospitality. Payrolls declined in professional services and manufacturing. Smaller businesses also resumed hiring after months of shedding workers.
“Small establishments recovered from November job losses with positive end-of-year hiring, even as large employers pulled back,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP and a contributor to Bloomberg Television, said in a statement.
Weakness in the labor market has been top of mind for Federal Reserve officials who cut interest rates three straight times to close out 2025. Policymakers are trying to balance that with stubborn inflation as they weigh further reductions in the new year.
Other data coming out this week will help inform their decision later this month. Key among those is the government’s monthly jobs report due Friday, which is expected to show mild hiring in December and a slight drop in the unemployment rate.
The ADP report, published in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, showed wage growth accelerated for workers who changed jobs, after registering the smallest annual gain since 2021 in the prior month. They saw a 6.6% gain, while those who stayed put saw a 4.4% advance in December.
ADP bases its findings on payrolls covering more than 26 million US private-sector employees. In addition to the monthly reports, ADP also releases separate data on a weekly basis. Payrolls were positive in each of the last three readings.
