ADP Private Payrolls

Month-over-month change in total nonfarm private-sector employment from ADP's National Employment Report — the main independent estimate of private payrolls published two days before the BLS jobs report. ADP surveys payroll records from roughly 25 million US employees. While its correlation with the official BLS private payrolls print is imperfect, it is the best early read on the direction of the upcoming NFP release. Significant divergences between ADP and BLS payrolls in recent cycles have made it a less reliable near-term predictor, but it remains valuable as a cross-check on hiring momentum.

Source: ADP Research Institute, accessed via ALFRED (Archival FRED). ALFRED archives each data point exactly as it was first published on release day — before any revision by the reporting agency. The figures shown here are what investors, traders, and policymakers were actually looking at when the data came out. Economic releases like payrolls, GDP, and inflation are often revised significantly in subsequent months; ALFRED lets you see the real-time picture.