ADP: U.S. Private Employers Added 86,000 Jobs in October

U.S. private sector employers added 86,000 jobs in October, beating the 70,000 consensus forecast and coming in just below September's 90,000, according to ADP's national employment report released Wednesday.

The headline number matters less than the pay data underneath it. Gross pay for private sector workers rose 4.7% in the month. For people staying in their jobs, the median change in gross pay was 4.4% — unchanged from the prior month. For people who switched jobs, median gross pay grew 7.6%, up from 7.3% in August.

That gap is the story. If you stayed put, your pay growth flatlined. If you moved, you got a raise roughly 1.7 times larger — and an accelerating one.

What did job changers actually get?

ADP's chief economist, Nela Richardson, laid out the mechanism: "Employers of all sizes were hiring last month, and our data suggests that job-changers were lured by a combination of bonuses, overtime, and more hours in addition to higher base pay."

So it's not just bigger salaries. Employers are stacking one-time bonuses, overtime hours and fuller schedules on top of base pay increases to pull people away from competitors. Richardson added: "Taken together, earnings growth for these workers hit its fastest pace since March 2024."

In plain terms: switching jobs hasn't paid this well in about a year and a half.

Which sectors hired — and which cut?

The job gains concentrated in three sectors:

• Trade, transportation and utilities: +39,000 jobs, the month's biggest contributor
• Education and health services: +28,000
• Financial activities: +15,000

The losses clustered in higher-paying office and extractive work:

• Professional and business services: −27,000
• Natural resources and mining: −8,000
• Information: −2,000

Read those numbers together and a split emerges. Goods-moving, care and finance roles are absorbing workers. Consulting-adjacent white-collar work, mining and tech-adjacent information jobs are shedding them.

What does this mean for your position?

If you work in trade, transportation, utilities, healthcare or financial services, the market is still pulling people in — and ADP's data shows employers of every size participated in October's hiring. That breadth suggests demand isn't confined to large firms.

If you're in professional and business services, the math runs the other way. Your sector lost 27,000 jobs in a single month while the broader economy gained. Any job search there means more competition per opening.

The pay-growth data cuts across all sectors, though: staying put currently buys you 4.4% median pay growth, while moving buys 7.6% — and that switching premium is widening, not narrowing. For an individual weighing a move, the data says employers are paying up most for people willing to change seats, and they're doing it with bonuses and hours as well as base salary.

One caveat worth flagging: ADP's figures measure private sector employment only, drawn from ADP client payroll data, and they often diverge from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' official count. Consensus estimates were beaten this month — but September's 90,000 figure sits in the same report as a reminder that monthly numbers get revised.

With hiring beating forecasts and switcher pay growth at its fastest pace since March 2024, the November reports will show whether October's momentum holds into year-end.