**ADP Jobs Report Highlights a Bifurcated U.S. Economy**
ADP’s latest jobs report paints a mixed picture of the U.S. economy—one step forward, one step back. Released Wednesday morning, the report is described by ADP as “an independent measure of the labor market based on the anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees in the United States.” According to the data, employers added 42,000 jobs in October. Annual pay was up 4.5%, unchanged from September.
On the surface, this could look like a rebound after two months of negative job growth. However, a deeper look into the data reveals a widening split between sectors and serious retrenchment among white-collar jobs. This comes as the government shutdown—the longest in history—continues to drag on.
**Hiring Concentrated in Select Sectors**
The gains, while modest, are real. However, they are far from broad-based. Hiring was largely concentrated in education and health care (+26,000), as well as trade, transportation, and utilities (+47,000).
In contrast, white-collar and consumer-facing industries continued to contract, and at a rapid pace. Professional and business services lost 15,000 jobs, the information sector lost 17,000, and leisure and hospitality saw a decrease of 6,000 jobs—all shedding positions for a third consecutive month.
**A “Bifurcated” Economy**
This pattern—growth in inelastic demand sectors like healthcare and logistics, versus contraction in discretionary-spending areas—captures the “bifurcated” economy referenced by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at last month’s FOMC press conference.
Low-income and service-sector workers are largely still employed, although inflation is eroding their purchasing power. Meanwhile, higher-income white-collar workers, once shielded from downturns, are now seeing layoffs not just in media but also in tech and consulting—the traditional strongholds of the knowledge economy. Additionally, tens of thousands of government employees remain furloughed, a reality that falls outside the scope of private-sector-only reports like ADP’s.
**ADP Data Fills the Void Amid Data Blackout**
The hard numbers from ADP arrive amidst a federal data blackout. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) still shuttered and much of Washington effectively closed, ADP’s private-payrolls data has become one of the few real-time indicators of hiring, however imperfect it may be.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner after complaining about “fake” jobs numbers. Now, almost no official data is being released at all.
**Fed Watches Labor Market Weakness**
The Federal Reserve, which cut rates in October due to concerns about labor-market weakness, is unlikely to find much reassurance in today’s report. Modest job growth, flat wage increases, and continued white-collar losses suggest the economy is not collapsing—but neither is it accelerating or healing.
In all, the ADP report depicts a U.S. economy that is adding just enough jobs to avoid recession headlines, while losing just enough to make it feel like a recession for many Americans.
https://qz.com/us-adds-42000-private-sector-jobs-but-white-collar-layoffs-mount