Private employers added 122,000 roles in May

Private employers added 122,000 roles in May Emma Ockerman Updated Wed, June 3, 2026 at 4:14 PM GMT+2 2 min read ADP US private employers added 122,000 jobs in May, payroll processor ADP said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected an increase of 120,000 roles, an increase from April’s revised level of 105,000, in a further sign of labor market stabilization. Gains were led by education and health services, though eight of the 10 supersectors ADP tracks posted gains.

“Hiring was more broad-based in May than we’ve seen in the last few years,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. “The labor market continues to show sustained momentum going into the summer hiring season. ” Pay for job stayers was up 4.

4% from a year earlier in a “solid but steady” trend, Richardson told reporters. For job changers, however, the pace of annual pay gains slowed to 6. 5% in May.

And pay growth continued to be especially modest for workers at companies with fewer than 19 employees, though those firms brought on some 49,000 jobs last month — more than any other establishment size. “If I were to point to a small fly in the very solid ointment of the labor market, it is the kinds of jobs that are being created,” Richardson said. “We’re seeing the part-time share be over 40% — it’s actually 42% in May.

That’s a higher share than we were tracking five years ago. ” The official unemployment rate for May will be published on Friday in the Labor Department’s jobs report. Meanwhile, Tuesday’s job openings and labor turnover report from the federal government offered mixed signals for job seekers.

Though job openings surged in April to their highest level since May 2024, helping nudge the ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers to its best level since the beginning of last year, the openings were largely concentrated in just one sector: professional and business services. Hiring, on the other hand, slid. And the quits rate, often seen as a barometer of workers’ confidence in the job market, also decreased slightly.

“For now, the labor market remains mostly stable. With the quits rate and the layoff rate ticking down in April, neither employees nor employers are in a hurry to make moves,” Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics, said in a report Tuesday. Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance.

You can reach her at emma. ockerman@yahooinc. com .