Private sector hiring totaled 62,000 in March, better than expected, ADP says

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNBC

Published Wed, Apr 1 2026 8:15 AM EDT Updated 4 Min Ago


Private sector employment growth was a bit better than expected in March, but health care and construction continued to provide nearly all the momentum, payrolls processing company ADP reported Wednesday.

Job growth totaled 62,000 for the month, down just 4,000 from February’s upwardly revised level but above the Dow Jones consensus for 39,000. ADP’s report does not include government employees. Like February’s report, two sectors essentially provided all the gains.

Education and health services contributed 58,000 — identical to the February total — while construction added 30,000. The health services total was held back in the prior month due to a since-resolved strike at Kaiser Permanente that sidelined more than 30,000 workers in Hawaii and California.

“We’ve seen two consecutive months of pretty steady job growth, but most of it has been in health care,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, told CNBC. “That’s really the story. Health care is transforming the labor market.”

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/01/private-sector-hiring-totaled-62000-in-march-better-than-expected-adp-says.html

---

“That’s really the story. Health care is transforming the labor market.”

That's because they were forced to replace many healthcare workers who were (often illegally) deported.

[Lovie777]

1. Low...................

[displacedvermoter]

2. I always thought, at least when a Democrat

was in office, that something like 200,000 jobs a month was expected, and when that number was missed, there was never much in the line of an analysis of the extenuating circumstances.

[doc03]

3. Jobs under Trump are a fraction of what we had under Joe Biden but the headline is

"Better than Expected". Today anything that is not a total disaster is considered "Better than Expected".

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Oracle just laid off

30K people.

[Prairie Gates]

5. 62000 is BETTER than expected?

[RainCaster]

6. What were the numbers under Democratic administrations?

The comparison is important.

[sakabatou]

7. 62,000 jobs. That is fucking low.

[progree]

8. Number of jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate level --

Lower Immigration Projections Mean Lower Breakeven Employment Growth Estimates, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 8/28/25
The old number: 150,000 jobs per month needed to keep the unemployment rate stable
The new number: 57,000 +/- 25,000 at a 90% confidence interval (think Heinz 57 varieties)
FFI: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143563268#post4

Diane Swonk at KPMG, 3/6/26: at 1:32 in the video: 10,000 +/- 30,000 jobs needed to hold unemployment rate steady
from https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/chief-economist-breaks-down-the-latest-jobs-report/vi-AA1XHf22
She doesn't say where that number comes from. It's quite significantly lower than the August 2025 Federal Reserve St. Louis number above.

The Labor Force in February (the latest) has increased by only 42,000 in the past 12 months (an average of 3,500 per month). It's down 9,000 from May.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11000000

ETA: With the recent massive downward benchmark revisions
Private sector jobs per BLS
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001

1/2024: 133,892,000
1/2025: 134,711,000
Difference: 819,000 private sector jobs (an average of 68,250/month) in Biden's last year.

The difference between the 1/2025 number and 1/2026 number (135,229,000) is 518k (43,167/month) in Trump's first year

BTW, the jobs number changes in the headlines (e.g. 62,000 in March) are NET new jobs, i.e. jobs added MINUS jobs lost. So merely replacing a departed worker is a net zero jobs gain. In both the BLS and ADP numbers.