FEATURED POST

April 15, 2026

Free labor doesn’t come cheap

Most employees say they work off the clock, and some do it a lot. But all this unpaid effort can have downsides for both workers and their organizations.
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April 14, 2026

What small employers are telling us about the labor market 

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

Sometimes a single number can capture a major trend. Last month, we saw just such a number in the ADP payroll data. In March, organizations with fewer than 50 employees reported the lowest turnover they’ve had in the nine years we’ve tracked the data.
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April 7, 2026

Is your job safe?

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

Is your job safe? When our Global Workforce Survey asked that question of more than 39,000 workers across the world, only 1 in 4 said yes. The rest of the respondents? Well, they were less confident about their employment status.
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February 24, 2026

What happened to labor market dynamism? 

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

In economics, markets are defined by their price and quantity. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been talking about the labor market, specifically its quantity of jobs and the price of those jobs as defined by pay. Looking at these elements together, two things become clear
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February 17, 2026

Pay trends to watch in 2026

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.Liv Wang

Last week, I presented five noteworthy facts about the National Employment Report. This week, let’s turn to the subject of wages and ADP’s Pay Insights data, which tracks the year-over-year pay change for individual workers each month. Through the lens of more than 26 million monthly private sector paychecks, we capture five key wage indicators shaping the labor market.
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February 10, 2026

Five things to know about the January ADP employment report

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.Tim Decker

Last week we published the first ADP National Employment Report for 2026. This January release is special because it captures our annual benchmarking, a process that transforms ADP’s expansive payroll data into a nationally representative gauge of private-sector employment.
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January 27, 2026

Thinking small

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

It was an eventful week at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. And behind the global headlines, I witnessed a part of the economy that often goes overlooked at these big events: small business
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January 20, 2026

AI and the great job unbundling

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

Greetings from the annual World Economic Forum. I’m in Davos, Switzerland, where business leaders and policymakers are sharing ideas about improving global cooperation and prosperity.
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January 13, 2026

The job market might be tighter than you think

by Nela Richardson, Ph.D.

Here’s what the data said about the labor market in 2025: Hiring slowed. Layoffs, as proxied by initial jobless claims, remained near historic lows. And workers were in no big rush to quit their jobs. Taken together, these numbers might suggest a softening labor market, with fewer jobs and less competition for workers. But hiring and employment churn are only part of the equation. Wages are another. And pay growth was robust in 2025.
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