ADP Employment: Private sector added 63K jobs
The ADP employment report exceeded the 50K forecast, posting the strongest monthly gain since July 2025. Tempering the results slightly was a downward revision to January’s figure, which was reduced from 22K to 11K.
Annual pay growth among job-stayers held steady at 4.5% year-over-year, unchanged from January. Job-changers saw annual wage growth of 6.3%, representing a slowdown from prior months.
Workers who switch jobs still tend to earn more than those who remain in place, but that advantage is narrowing and increasingly difficult to capture in our soft hiring environment. Most hiring activity remains concentrated in a handful of sectors, as companies retain existing employees and limit new additions.
Even accounting for the January revision, the ADP report is encouraging. However, its relationship with Friday’s nonfarm payrolls release remains uncertain, as historical correlation between the two reports has been inconsistent at best.
💡Nonfarm Payrolls Preview
The labor market has slipped lower on the list of immediate concerns. Inflation risks have resurfaced, and geopolitical tensions related to Iran now dominate headlines. The impact of both factors on employment trends remains unclear.
The current forecast for nonfarm payroll growth is 58K, well below January’s 130K reading. There is also a decent chance of a downward revision to prior months’ data. While the past two jobs reports showed improvement compared to the weakness seen in the third and fourth quarters, the labor market remains fragile.
The labor market is not fully healed, but it is no longer in crisis either. At its next meeting, the Federal Reserve may place greater emphasis on inflation and broader policy considerations, yet it will continue to monitor employment and unemployment data closely.
The headline payroll and unemployment numbers often obscure underlying trends, and the most concerning signals are likely to appear beneath the surface.
A federal trade-court judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to start refunding the more than $130 billion it collected in the global tariffs invalidated by the Supreme Court last month.
Following a hearing involving a filtration company’s fight for a refund, Judge Richard Eaton at the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade issued a written order directing the administration to begin the process of refunding importers. He set a hearing for Friday at which he asked for updates.
More than 2,000 lawsuits have been filed by companies—including big names such as Costco Wholesale, FedEx, and Pandora Jewelry—seeking to recoup their money.
The judge’s order requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection to issue refunds by recalculating the initial duties importers paid, excluding the tariffs voided by the high court. Eaton also said the court’s chief judge indicated he will be in charge of settling the refund litigation.
Larry Friedman, a partner at Barnes, Richardson & Colburn, said this means the government has to issue a refund to everyone who paid the tariffs. “This is the order I hoped for, but never expected to see,” he said.
The administration is expected to appeal the order to prevent it from taking effect immediately. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. In court on Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer asked for Eaton to pause his order while the government appeals, but the judge denied that request.
The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the government hadn’t yet formalized its position on refunding the tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old law. “Your position is clear,” the judge said. “The Supreme Court told you what your position is.”
The Justice Department lawyer, Claudia Burke, said that any refund process would be time-consuming for the tariff collector, CBP. The government agency would have to manually go through millions of import entries, she added.
“We live in the age of computers,” Eaton said. “It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn’t need a manual review.”
Nunzio De Filippis, a customs broker, said he is being inundated with calls from his clients but that Wednesday’s order doesn’t guarantee refunds.
“The courts still need to figure out the mechanics of how this actually gets unwound,” he said. “My message to the trade community is to chill out. There’s still a whole process to figure out.”
Companies were lining up at the trade court for refunds even before the Supreme Court issued its decision.
The justices didn’t address whether or how the money should be repaid. That left it up to the trade court, which heard a key initial challenge to the tariffs, to make those decisions.
The Trump administration has given mixed signals about how it will approach returning the money. Hours after the Supreme Court issued its ruling, Trump criticized the justices for not including a clear directive on refunds.
“Wouldn’t you think they would have put one sentence in there, saying: ‘Keep the money,’ or ‘Don’t keep the money, right?” Trump told reporters. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”
The administration’s lawyers assured lower courts in filings in one case that companies could be “made whole through a refund, including interest” if the tariffs were ultimately ruled unlawful.
For many trade lawyers, Eaton’s order came as a surprise. They had been expecting judges who heard the initial cases challenging Trump’s tariffs to also lead the decision-making on refunds. One of the cases that ultimately went up to the Supreme Court was decided by a three-judge panel that Eaton, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, wasn’t on.
The legal filings piling up at the trade court seeking refunds have largely looked very similar, but lawyers in the case that Eaton heard on Wednesday did something others didn’t: They asked for an emergency order to stop the government from finalizing the amounts importers paid on goods that were subject to the tariffs.
Kathleen Claussen, a law professor at Georgetown University, said it was remarkable that one case out of thousands has transformed the course of the refund litigation.
“The story of these tariffs in the courts from day one has always been small businesses seeking relief and then gaining momentum,” she said.
If you're reshaping the workforce because AI is eating tasks faster than humans can adapt, then step up and own it like a leader. Don't hide behind ambiguous "performance" excuses or "shifting business priorities."
The corporate brass at Morgan Stanley needs to come clean—this downsizing is about efficiency in an AI-driven world, plain and simple. It's not the most comforting thought when client financial matters demand trust and confidentiality, but transparency builds more loyalty than spin ever will.
To the teams affected today: dust yourselves off, get back in the game, and remember—turn disruption into opportunity.
But when you examine what is actually happening inside many of the largest companies in the United States, the picture becomes more nuanced.
Many Fortune 500 companies are not simply shrinking their workforce. They are reallocating talent.
Organizations like Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Walmart, UnitedHealth, and Tesla continue to expand hiring in areas such as AI infrastructure, cloud computing, cybersecurity, healthcare services, robotics, logistics, and renewable energy. At the same time, they are reducing roles that are more easily automated or that belong to legacy operational structures.
This means the story is not just about layoffs. It is about a large-scale shift in where talent is applied.
Historically, this pattern is not new. Major technological changes have always reshaped the workforce.
The Industrial Revolution moved labor from farms to factories.
The computer revolution moved labor from clerical work into software and IT.
The internet created entire industries that did not exist 30 years ago.
Artificial intelligence appears to be driving a similar transformation.
Some roles are declining, particularly repetitive administrative or routine technical work. But many organizations are simultaneously increasing their overall talent pool by investing in high-skill areas tied to emerging technologies and infrastructure.
In other words, we are not just seeing layoffs. We are seeing a reallocation of human capability.
The companies adapting most successfully are not eliminating people. They are shifting their workforce toward the skills that will define the next decade of innovation.
The real question is not whether AI will change the workforce. It already is.
The real question is where talent will create the most value next.
While there are so many takeaways here (Not every CEO needs to be the face of their brand; Not all CEO content needs to be short-form video), I can’t help but find the ‘product’ comment endearing.
After capturing content with a variety of professionals from A-list Hollywood talent to surgeons, chefs, and stylists, I’ve realized that one of the most under-appreciated traits of a great marketing team is the ability to authentically guide subject matter experts through the social media process.
Part of this role is to be a translator. Like Chris Kempczinski, the people we work with are incredibly talented at what they do. But they’re so deeply immersed in their industry that they need people who can bridge the consumer knowledge gap, ensure they’re speaking in layman’s terms, and that everything comes off the right way.
I’ll bet you anything the McDonald’s CEO didn’t want to record this video. The social team probably didn’t want to post it either. While an entirely different direction is probably the best course of action, a little more coaching and directing might have led to a more successful video - even if it wasn’t the same concept that was originally planned.