Meeting the moment: ADP’s new weekly labor-market pulse

For nearly 20 years, the ADP National Employment Report has delivered a monthly snapshot of U.S. private-sector hiring.

Three years ago, in the aftermath of the pandemic and its structural impact on the labor market, we partnered with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab to retool the NER, which is built on the anonymized administrative payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees, or 1 in 6 workers in the United States.  

By now, most readers are familiar with our retooled flagship report an independent and comprehensive release that tracks monthly changes in employment going back to 2010. Perhaps it’s less well known that we also publish weekly employment data with a one-month lag. For both the monthly and weekly time series, we provide data by industry, employer size, and census division, both seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted.

When we launched the monthly NER, we also recognized the value of a more high-frequency snapshot of employment trends. We knew then that we had another important task ahead of us: construction of a near real-time employment tracker.  

Today, we make good on that goal with the launch of the weekly NER pulse.

Like the debut of the NER, the launch of NER pulse is meeting a critical moment in the economy, which is being transformed by AI, demographic change, and short-term business cycle fluctuations. The NER pulse of private-sector hiring will provide a dynamic and granular view of job creation and loss at an unprecedented weekly frequency.

A lot can happen in a month, especially in an economy as complex as ours. Weather and geopolitics can abruptly disrupt output. Industries can experience unexpected upheavals or fast-moving productivity booms. Technology can change business functions and hiring needs at lightning speed. And trends rarely, if ever, progress in a straight line; there are bumps in the road and short-lived detours along the way.

High-frequency data can tell us whether a dip in hiring is just a bump in the road or something more. It can help us spot labor market weakness — or approaching recoveries. It can lead us to a deeper understanding of business cycles. In times of economic stress and recovery, weekly data can be invaluable for identifying turning points.

Our NER pulse series will be published on a regular cadence, giving decision-makers an opportunity to assess developments in the labor market as they occur and a head start on responding to our dynamic employment landscape.

The NER pulse

Three times a month, Main Street Macro will release preliminary estimates of the week-over-week change in employment based on a four-week moving average. These releases will have a two-week time lag to allow for more complete and accurate estimates of real-time employment trends.

We will continue to publish the final National Employment Report each month. This monthly report is built on a reference week that includes the 12^th day of the month and typically publishes on the first Wednesday of the month. It provides breakdowns by industry, geography, and employer size, both seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted. We won’t publish the NER pulse during NER release weeks.

For the four weeks ending Oct. 11, 2025, the NER pulse shows that private employers added an average of 14,250 jobs per week.

This growth in employment suggests that the U.S. economy is emerging from its recent trough of job losses. Hiring has begun to increase from September levels, albeit slowly and without the positive momentum we saw earlier in the year. This tepid recovery could support economic growth, however, because our run of week-over-week job losses seems to have been relatively short-lived.  

The mission of ADP Research is to make work more productive through data-driven discovery. To that end, our goal is to provide the public with a timely signal of current private-sector employment.

For more than four years, Main Street Macro has given you a weekly take on economic activity and events of consequence to employers and employees. My hope is that our new data series will build on that commitment and help meet your need for reliable information in this complex and dynamic labor market.

The week ahead

Tuesday. The job market isn’t the only softening market we’ve seen this year. Home price growth shifted into a lower gear in July, and today the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index will tell us if that trend changed course in August.

Wednesday. Federal Reserve policymakers meet this week to weigh a change to interest rates. With last week’s consumer price data showing still-sticky inflation above the Fed’s target rate and employment data showing a lack of momentum since the beginning of the year, both sides of the central bank’s mandate must be watched closely.

Thursday. We’re scheduled to get a first look at third-quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but the data is likely to be delayed due to the ongoing government shutdown.