US private sector employers added 242,000 jobs in February, ADP said Wednesday.

That was more than the 200,000 consensus expected. The range of estimates, from around three-dozen economists who ventured a guess, was 100,000 to 300,000.

January’s headline was revised higher to show a 119,000 gain, still nowhere in the ballpark of the blockbuster NFP print, which’ll be revised on Friday, but surely not to anything that even loosely approximates the ADP number.

To the extent the data reflects the underlying trend in the labor market, there’s little evidence of deceleration. Indeed, February’s print was double January’s.

“There is a tradeoff in the labor market right now,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said. “We’re seeing robust hiring, which is good for the economy and workers, but pay growth remains quite elevated,” she added. “The modest slowdown in pay increases, on its own, is unlikely to drive down inflation rapidly in the near-term.”

That latter bit was an understatement. ADP’s new “pay insights” report showed wage growth for job stayers receding to 7.2% YoY. Although that was the lowest in 12 months, it was still more than double the 3.5% economists see as consistent with 2% inflation.

For job switchers (ADP calls them “changers”), the median increase last month was 14.3%, the slowest pace since January of 2022, but so far above levels conducive to disinflation that the comparison isn’t even worth making. Plainly, the monetary incentive for labor market churn is alive and well.

Wage growth in leisure and hospitality remained in the double-digits. It’s been stuck at 10.1% (YoY) for three straight months. That points to an acute situation in the services sector.

Only businesses with 49 or less employees shed jobs last month. If it’s evidence of corporate layoffs you’re looking for, you won’t find it in the February vintage of the ADP report. Firms with 500 or more employees added 160,000 jobs.

Across industries, everybody was hiring except construction and professional services, apparently. Leisure and hospitality added 83,000 workers last month.

Frankly, it’s difficult to make heads or tails of ADP’s figures. That’s not an attempt to disparage the numbers, it’s just to say that between i) the unprecedented circumstances currently shaping the US labor market, ii) the fact that traders simply don’t care much about the ADP data given the primacy of NFP in the Fed’s decision calculus and iii) last year’s overhaul which, improvement or not, forced market observers to grapple with a “new” series, the incentive to trade the release just isn’t there.

And that’s fine. Because, although this is easy to forget, these releases aren’t aimed at facilitating trading activity. They’re designed to be a snapshot of economic trends. If you trade on them, that’s your decision. And when it goes wrong, it’s your fault.