U.S. private payrolls up 42,000 in October, topping forecasts

US companies increased private payrolls by 42,000 in October 2025, according to the ADP National Employment Report, the first monthly gain since July and one of the few timely labor readings available while official Bureau of Labor Statistics data are paused during the government shutdown.

Private employers, whose anonymized payrolls ADP tracks each month, had cut 29,000 positions in September, so the October figure marked a swing back into positive territory and came in stronger than the roughly 30,000 jobs economists had expected. ADP said the increase was “modest” compared with hiring earlier in the year, but it nonetheless pointed to education, health, trade, transportation and utilities as the main sources of new jobs. The return to growth is significant because investors, the Fed and state officials currently lack the government’s nonfarm payrolls, unemployment and earnings series and are leaning on private datasets to gauge hiring momentum. 

ADP reported that annual pay for job-stayers rose 4.5% in October and 6.7% for job-changers, roughly in line with recent months, which its chief economist Nela Richardson said reflects a labor market where supply and demand are “balanced” rather than overheating. That wage profile, together with the 42,000 headline gain, suggests the private sector is still adding workers but is doing so more cautiously than in 2024, and without the kind of acceleration that would complicate the Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate decision.

The sector breakdown underlined how uneven the rebound was. Services tied to population and goods flows expanded: education and health care added staff, and the broad trade, transportation and utilities bucket recorded roughly 47,000 jobs, enough to offset losses elsewhere. But for the third month in a row, employers in professional and business services, information, and even leisure and hospitality cut positions, continuing a 2025 pattern in which white-collar and media/tech-adjacent firms trim headcount while care, logistics and consumer-facing operations keep hiring. That means the positive 42,000 print rests on a narrow group of industries rather than on broad-based hiring.

What made the November 5, 2025 release more important than a typical ADP material was timing. Because the shutdown has interrupted publication of BLS reports, markets do not have the usual government nonfarm payrolls – normally the single most-watched monthly indicator for growth, wages and participation. ADP anticipated this gap and last week rolled out a weekly preliminary estimate series to give a higher-frequency view of private payrolls; the 42,000 October result comes on top of those weekly snapshots and will likely serve as the proxy benchmark for analysts until Washington restarts official statistics. Economists still warn that ADP and BLS often diverge, but with no BLS print available, Wednesday’s figure is effectively the only national hiring number on the tape.