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progree

(12,313 posts)
10. Tomorrow's BLS report will include government workers. The ADP report is private sector workers
Thu Sep 4, 2025, 11:22 AM
Sep 4
This is something I posted July 2. So some of the numbers are not the latest, but it gives an idea of the difference between the "all" non-farm payrolls (BLS) and ADP numbers, which are private-sector only. I would update this if it were tomorrow when the BLS numbers come out so that we have a full set to compare.

The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) data series --

# Nonfarm Employment (Establishment Survey, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001
Monthly changes: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth

# Nonfarm PRIVATE Employment (Establishment Survey, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001
Monthly changes: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001?output_view=net_1mth
^-Good for comparison to the ADP report that typically comes out a few days earlier

According to the above links, In May, the "all" non-farm payroll employment was 159,561,000, while the private sector non-farm payroll employment was 135,968,000; so the private sector is about 85.2% the size of the "all".

Anyway, the 2nd link above (private) is what should be compared tomorrow to today's ADP report.

While I'm at it, I noticed that, according to the BLS in May (using the "monthly changes" links above), the private sector jobs grew by 140k while the "all" jobs grew by 139k.

For 2024, the "all" increased by an average of 167k / month, while the private sector increased by 130k / month. This is the kind of gap one would expect to see between "all" and private in a normal year.

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Also, the ADP numbers cover only about 20% of the nation's private workforce.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20191008a.htm

the ADP National Employment Report and ADP Small Business Report are derived from ADP payroll data representing 460,000 U.S. clients and nearly 26 million workers
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/september-2021-adp-national-employment-121500533.html
the above link is no longer good, but archive.org has it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211207005815/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/september-2021-adp-national-employment-121500533.html

How they extrapolate from 20% to the remaining 80%, I have no idea.

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