Wednesday, April 1st, 2026<\/p>\n
Welcome back to \u201cJobs Week\u201d on this April Fool\u2019s Day, where monthly Automatic Data Processing ADP numbers are out for March. Headline +62K private-sector jobs were created last month, higher than the +39K analysts were expecting, and only slightly down from the upwardly revised +66K for February.<\/p>\n
New jobs in the private sector were pretty fairly balanced between Goods (+30K) and Services (+32K). Job Stayers averaged +4.5% in wage increases year over year; Job Changers \u2014 which had flattened considerably over the past few months \u2014 widened out a tad to +6.6% in this morning\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the surprise from this print: Small private sector firms (sub-50 employees), brought in the lion\u2019s share of new jobs last month: +85K. Large corporations (500 workers or more) lost -4K and the remaining -20K was from medium-sized companies. Education\/Healthcare led the way once again with +58K new jobs in the private sector, followed by +30K in Construction and +7K in Leisure\/Hospitality. Manufacturing lost -11K private-sector jobs in the month, and Trade\/Transportation\/Utilities cancelled out Education\/Healthcare jobs, -58K.<\/p>\n
ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson, on this mornings \u201cSquawk Box\u201d program on CNBC, attributes part of this to a \u201cshift in demand toward home healthcare,\u201d both among aging customers looking for assistance in their current residence and employees often looking to supplement their household income by taking a second or third part-time job. Many of these newly filled positions in the Healthcare space do not come with 401(k)s or health insurance plans. Part-time employment is rising in the U.S., even as outright joblessness does not look like a huge problem.<\/p>\n
Richardson also pointed out that \u201cwe haven\u2019t seen any of that (fallout from the Iran war) yet,\u201d but that if energy costs \u201cspill over into hiring,\u201d that this may have a negative impact on small-business hiring in the near future. Non-farm payroll estimates from the U.S. government on Friday are expected to come in at +59K.<\/p>\n
Retail Sales (February) Improve Over Expectations<\/p>\n
The latest delayed economic print this morning came from U.S. Retail Sales for February, which came in +10 basis points (bps) from expectations to +0.6%, following a downwardly revised -0.1% from the prior month. Ex-autos rises to +0.5%, 20 bps above estimates, while the January revision ups 20 bps to +0.2%. Ex-autos & gas reached +0.4%, up slightly from the upwardly revised +0.3% sequentially.<\/p>\n
What to Expect After the Open<\/p>\n
Manufacturing prints are on order for after the opening bell. S&P final Manufacturing PMI for March ratcheted up notably to 52.4 from 51.6 the previous month. ISM Manufacturing moved slightly in the opposite direction \u2014 52.1% from 52.4% last reported \u2014 but still above the crucial 50-level, which indicates growth versus loss.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Dow is up again in this morning\u2019s pre-market, +190 points, +0.41%. The S&P 500 is +29, +0.44%, and the Nasdaq \u2014 fresh off a nearly 800-point gain yesterday \u2014 is up another +155 points, +0.65%. The small-cap Russell 2000 is +11 points, +0.46%. The blue-chip Dow is positive over the past five trading days, but all major indexes are still way down in the past month.<\/p>\n
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).<\/p>\n
Zacks Investment Research<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday, April 1st, 2026 Welcome back to \u201cJobs Week\u201d on this April Fool\u2019s Day, where monthly Automatic Data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-359528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}