The jobs market is stuck in place to start the year
A new report from payroll processing firm ADP showed that the jobs market sluggishness that defined the end of 2025 continued into this year
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Private sector hiring started 2026 practically stuck in neutral, according to a new report, with companies adding only 22,000 jobs in January.
The report Wednesday from the payroll processing firm ADP showed that the jobs market sluggishness that defined the end of 2025 continued into this year. Total jobs growth would have been negative if it weren't for 74,000 jobs added in the education and health services sector, according to the ADP report. Manufacturing has lost jobs every month for almost two years, the firm said, helping lead the slowdown along with professional and business services and large employers.
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The data will be even more closely watched than usual given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is delaying Friday's release of the January jobs report due to the brief partial government shutdown this week.
“Job creation took a step back in 2025, with private employers adding 398,000 jobs, down from 771,000 in 2024,” Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said in a statement. “While we've seen a continuous and dramatic slowdown in job creation for the past three years, wage growth has remained stable.”
ADP's December report showed that while private employment ticked up overall, job losses remained significant and, more tellingly, remain concentrated in business services and IT — sectors tied to corporate investment, tech, and white-collar work. Manufacturing payrolls kept shrinking, too.
And the federal government's December jobs report, while showing modest growth to end 2025, did little to quiet growing questions about whether the economy is stabilizing, stuck in a prolonged “no-hire, no-fire” limbo — or outright weakening. On the surface, the headline numbers suggested an economy still adding jobs, albeit at a sluggish pace. But there were worrying signs.
One of the most striking developments in the report was a sharp 25,000 decline in retail employment, an unusual contraction even accounting for the way the BLS numbers smooth out seasonal effects. Losing retail jobs suggests a quiet but deeper pullback — either because planned hiring never fully materialized, or because companies are actively cutting costs regardless of consumer spending.
—Catherine Baab contributed to this article.