Private sector employment in the USA increased by 235,000 jobs in December and annual pay was up 7.3% year-over-year, according to the December ADP National Employment Report produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
The jobs report and pay insights use ADP’s fine-grained anonymised and aggregated payroll data of over 25 million US employees to provide a representative picture of the labour market. The report details the current month’s total private employment change and weekly job data from the previous month. ADP’s pay measure uniquely captures the earnings of a cohort of almost 10 million employees over a 12-month period.
“The labour market is strong but fragmented, with hiring varying sharply by industry and establishment size,” said Nela Richardson, Chief Economist, ADP. “Business segments that hired aggressively in the first half of 2022 have slowed hiring and, in some cases, cut jobs in the last month of the year.”
Private employers added 235,000 jobs in December
Job resurgence was seen in the last two months of 2022, led by consumer-facing service industries. Hiring was strong across small and medium establishments, while large establishments saw a drop in employment of 151,000 jobs.
Goods-producing jobs saw an increase of 22,000 overall – construction saw an increase of 41,000, while natural resources/mining saw a decrease of 14,000 and manufacturing saw a decrease of 5,000.
Service-providing jobs saw an increase of 213,000 employees with winners in the professional/business services sector with a 52,000 person increase and an increase in education/health services by 42,000. There was a huge increase in leisure/hospitality of 123,000. Trade/transportation/utilities decreased by 24,000 and financial activities by 12,000.
December saw the lowest pay growth since March 2022
December ushered in the largest decline in pay growth for job stayers in the three-year series history. Leisure and hospitality; trade, transportation and utilities; and information sectors had the sharpest declines in pay gains. Job changers’ pay growth also fell to the lowest level in 10 months.
People who stayed in their job saw an increase of 7.3% and people who changed jobs saw an increase of 15.2%.
Small firms with one to 19 employees saw an increase of 5.4% and companies with 20-49 employees a change of 6.9%. Firms with employees between 50 and 499 saw a change of 7.6% and firms with employees above 500 saw a change of 7.7%.
The ADP National Employment Report is an independent estimate of the change in US private employment and pay derived from actual, anonymised payroll data of client companies served by ADP, a leading provider of human capital management solutions. The report is produced by ADP Research Institute in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.