US private sector employers added 145,000 jobs in March, ADP said Wednesday.

That was well below expectations. Consensus wanted 210,000 from their NFP appetizer.

The range of estimates was 160,000 to 250,000, so the actual print was below the lowest guess. In the context of a tight labor market and too-hot wage growth, you could sell this to yourself as good news if you’re in the mood to buy risk assets. That said, the mood across markets felt a bit subdued early this week in what I’d call a hangover from a Q1 that went better than it probably should have for stocks considering the circumstances.

The 145,000 ADP print represented the second-slowest pace of hiring in two years, but was hardly indicative of recession.

“Our March payroll data is one of several signals that the economy is slowing,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said Wednesday. “Employers are pulling back from a year of strong hiring.”

The figures came on the heels of data showing a welcome drop in the number of open jobs across the US economy. Incidentally, I think “welcome” works for the JOLTS data irrespective of your political leanings. There are still 9.93 million open positions, so for the Progressives and Democrats among you, don’t worry: “Dangerous” Jerome Powell is nowhere near his goal of balancing the US labor market. For the GOPers, you needn’t worry either: The Fed is making progress towards ensuring regular people don’t make “too much” money.

Speaking of regular people and pay growth, ADP’s “Pay Insights” dashboard now shows the median YoY pay gain for job stayers is below 7% for the first time since January of 2022. Job changers, though, are still tempted by annual pay growth in excess of 14%. Tuesday’s JOLTS data from the BLS showed an uptick in quits, which were more than four million in February. The higher the reward for changing jobs, the more churn they’ll be.

Notably, YoY wage growth in leisure and hospitality fell below 10% in the ADP report for the first time since October of 2021. “Pay growth, after a three-month plateau, is inching down,” the ADP’s Richardson went on to say.

Coming quickly back to the jobs figures, hiring was concentrated in small firms. Of the 145,000 jobs created in the private sector last month, more than two-thirds were in businesses with 49 or fewer employees.

One has to wonder if some of the workers let go since October from large companies are now being forced into services sector jobs at local businesses.

By sector, manufacturing shed 30,000 jobs. That’s in line with growing evidence that the goods-producing side of the economy is decelerating. Nearly 100,000 positions were eliminated across financial, professional and business services, consistent with headlines documenting white collar layoffs.

As usual, leisure and hospitality led gains. Indeed, the lion’s share of the jobs added last month (98,000) were in leisure and hospitality, according to ADP.

In general, this report was constructive if you’re hoping for additional data points to suggest the economy is cooling down without falling down. Of course, if you’re among the newly jobless and you didn’t “voluntarily separate” yourself, “constructive” probably isn’t the best adjective.