The US labor market just flashed another yellow light. ADP’s NER Pulse report for July 14, 2026, showed private-sector employment growing by just 19,750 jobs per week on a four-week moving average, falling short of both market expectations and the prior week’s reading of 21,000.
The hiring slowdown in context
The weekly hiring pulse has been sliding noticeably. For the week ending June 23, ADP reported 30,750 jobs added on the same four-week average basis. By July 7, that figure had dropped to 21,000. Now it sits at 19,750. That’s a decline of roughly 36% in just three weeks.
ADP’s monthly report for June 2026 painted a similar picture at a higher altitude. That report showed 98,000 private-sector jobs added for the month, accompanied by year-over-year pay growth of 4.4%.
ADP pulls its data from payroll records covering hundreds of thousands of US businesses, making it one of the more comprehensive real-time snapshots of employment trends available. These weekly NER Pulse updates, typically published on Mondays, serve as a leading indicator ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official monthly employment reports.
