October 2025 ADP National Employment Report Summary & Takeaways

Industry Insights

Due to the continued government shutdown, the BLS is not releasing its JOLTS or Employment Situation Summaries. We’ll be providing our synopsis of the ADP National Employment Report in the interim.

The October 2025 ADP National Employment Report showed private employers adding 42,000 jobs last month, a rebound from August and September. ADP gathers its metrics using payroll data of 26M+ U.S. employees. Dow Jones analysts were expecting ADP to report an addition of 22,000 jobs.

ADP Private Employment Chart Oct 25

Chart Source: ADP

Change in Private Sector Employment

July ’25	104K
August ’25	-3K
September ’25	-29K
October ’25	42K

ADP also reports on pay trends, noting year-over-year growth was flat in October for job stayers (4.5%) and job changers (6.7%) compared to September. This data is pulled from the wages and salaries of 14.8M+ employees over a 12-month period. Industries that saw the highest median pay changes were:

Financial activites: 5.2%
Manufacturing: 4.8%
Leisure and hospitality: 4.6%
Construction: 4.5%

Industry-wise, education and health services added jobs for the third consecutive month. There was also a significant turnaround in trade, transportation, and utilities employment. Other services and professional and business services employment continued to decrease.

Change in Employment by Industry

Industry	August	September	October
Construction	10,000	-4,000	5,000
Manufacturing	-18,000	2,000	-3,000
Education & Health Services	18,000	32,000	25,000
Financial Activities	8,000	-9,000	11,000
Information	-13,000	1,000	-17,000
Leisure & Hospitality	10,000	-16,000	-5,000
Natural Resources & Mining	10,000	-5,000	7,000
Other Services	-10,000	-17,000	-14,000
Professional & Business Services	-1,000	-6,000	-15,000
Trade, Transportation & Utilities	-17,000	-6,000	47,000

ADP’s insights allow us to keep a pulse on the market, though uncertainty and caution will continue with the lack of government data.

“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog? You slow down,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in the October 29 press conference. “I hope by the time of the December meeting we’re getting a better flow of data. But if we -- we’re going to have to do our jobs one way or the other.”

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