Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the ADP National Employment Report Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Thursday, June 2, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joanna DiNizio, please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the May 2022 ADP National Employment Report Media Conference Call. With us is Nela Richardson, Chief Economist at ADP. Nela will share her thoughts on the May findings, which is derived from ADP's actual data of those who are on a company's payroll and produced in collaboration with Moody's Analytics, and then she'll take as many of your questions as possible before our hard stop at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Nela, please go ahead.

Thanks, Joanna. Good morning, everybody. Private sector payrolls grew by 128,000 on-net in the month of May. As you can understand, this falls well short of the 391,000 average in the first 4 months of the year. Drop -- growth slowed across the board as good producers added 24,000 jobs in May, while service providers, which had been the engine of growth for the recovery, also moderated to 140,000 jobs. Now this ADP Moody's Analytics estimate has been lower than BLS estimates in the past 3 months due largely to what we're seeing on weakness in small firm hiring, which we'll talk about a little bit later. The moderation in hiring is also because of, one, the labor market is nearing very close to full employment. And relatedly, it's labor market tightness and ongoing labor supply issues. And that was seen in the JOLTS data that was just released yesterday, which led into the month of May. We saw that postings and quits were still quite elevated, while layoffs and discharges were at series low. And that data is also supported by a recent ADP Research Institute quarterly small business survey that we conducted in April. And that survey showed that finding qualified workers remains an overwhelming challenge for small businesses. In fact, 55% of our small firm clients reported it as a key challenge, and that's a big jump from the first quarter report with 39% of ADP small business clients cited hiring, finding qualified workers as the top job challenge. We're also seeing weekly jobless claims remain low by historic standards. We're at levels that were lasting in the 1960s and that's signaling just how reluctant firms are to lay off workers in the current tight environment. However, jobless claims have edged up higher in recent weeks. Yesterday was no exception. And we are closely watching whether this material slowdown in hiring could, as we get further into the summer, coincide with rising layoffs. So this is not something we're worried about, just something we're watching. ADP HR data also suggests that job postings may have already peaked and may decrease further as companies reconsider open recs. And that supports what we saw in terms of a slight decrease in the job openings data yesterday. Now let's turn to the industry detail before we get to the firm size. We saw that goods producers, as I mentioned, added 24,000 jobs in May. Construction payrolls fell by 2,000 after averaging a 34,000 job gain in the last 6 months. And this is the first time the NER estimate has signaled a loss in construction employment since February 2021. Natural resources and mining added 5,000 jobs in May, and that was in line with the average over the last 6 months. Manufacturing added 22,000. That's about half the pace of growth in the fourth -- first quarter of the year. And the industry is holding up well given supply chain constraints, as we've mentioned in other months, but there is some still very present challenges, including global events like the China like lockdown. Service providers -- one more thing about manufacturing, we're still seeing some strong consumer demand. So there is a bit of a muddled outlook in terms of job gains in manufacturing for the year, both that push and pull of fairly solid consumer demand but still some ongoing supply issues. Now let's look at service providers, which added 104,000 jobs in May, bringing the year-to-date average to 181,000. In the sector of trade, transport and utilities, that added 8,000. That's the weakest reading since the recovery began, and it's well off the year-to-date average of 63,000. If you recall, this category, it represents a diverse set of businesses. Some of them were impacted at different stages in the jobs recovery. For example, air passenger transportation was crippled in the early stages, and it's just beginning to recover. There's a long road ahead in terms of adding head count. Segments of retail trade is more secular in its recovery and its trends, given the shift towards e-commerce. And then, of course, transportation and warehousing saw a big boom early in the pandemic, and we've seen a surge in payrolls over the last 2 years, and that might also be moderating. Leisure and hospitality added 17,000 jobs in May after averaging 116,000 in the first 4 months of the year. The waning impact of the pandemic and then increasingly widespread reopening in the U.S. is being restrained by consumers now facing elevated inflation. So we think that staffing issues will remain a hurdle to stronger hiring in this industry for the remainder of the year. And then finally, professional/business services grew by 23,000 in May after averaging 63,000 through April this year. And it was really those high-paying professional services rather than the lower-paid in-office support staff that accounted for nearly all the job gains added in May. So turning to firm size, and we'll end here. Small businesses remain a source of concern as the labor market recovery continues to mature and slow. Firms with less than 50 employees lost 91,000 jobs in May and are now averaging losses of 37,000 so far this year. Conversely, large firms have been booming. Firms with at least 500 employees gained 122,000 jobs in May and year-to-date averaged an impressive 286,000 and even midsized companies kept turning out jobs in May, adding 97,000 against an 88,000 average through April. So we're seeing, again, the outperformance of large companies which is due in part to the struggle of all firms, but in the struggle, small firms are more disadvantaged to find and hire workers at wages that are both competitive with other firms but also account for the higher cost of living brought on by elevated inflation levels. So that sums up the May report. I can turn it back to Joanna to answer your questions.

Thank you, Nela. Operator, we are ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And I'm showing no questions at this time.

Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us this month. We look forward to having you back here for the next report, which will be released on July 7. The call has now concluded.

That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.