ADP Employment Report: -32,000 Jobs in September after -43,000 Annual Adjustment to Benchmark ADP data to BLS Data

The QCEW provides a quarterly count of Paid Employment based on the quarterly payroll tax filings by employers, covering about 95% of payroll jobs, but the BLS releases it annually with a long lag. As part of the annual adjustment, ADP reduced its September job count by 43,000 jobs. The 43,000-job adjustment to benchmark the data to the 2024 QCEW took this small job gain to a job loss of 32,000. Same thing for August: ADP applied the 2024 QCEW benchmark adjustment of 57,000 jobs to the August job gain of 54,000 jobs, which flipped it to a job loss of 3,000. The ADP data is seasonally adjusted.