US private sector hiring ran at just half the pace economists expected in February, data released on Wednesday showed.

The ADP headline, at 77,000, fell well short of the 140,000 consensus. The range of estimates was wide. The lowest guess called for only a marginal net gain, but the highest estimate saw a 300,000-job bonanza (I’m not sure what universe that economist’s living in, but it sounds like a fun place, or anyway a reality much friendlier than the one where, to quote The Washington Post‘s opinion section, which isn’t supposed to be running “opposition” headlines anymore, “Trump has set the country back nearly 100 years in just five days”).

Anyway, 77,000 counted as the weakest ADP headline since July and the second-slowest pace since Q4 2023.

January’s headline was revised up slightly, to 186,000. The three-month average is now 141,000, the weakest since September, when the Fed started cutting rates out of concern for the labor market.

Notably, small businesses — those with 19 or fewer employees — shed jobs last month. The strongest hiring impulse was among the largest firms, those with 500 or more workers.

ADP chief economist Nela Richardson stated the obvious: The downshift’s unavoidably traceable to “policy uncertainty,” which is just an oblique reference to Donald Trump. “A slowdown in consumer spending might have led to layoffs last month,” she said Wednesday.

Trade & transportation, IT and health & education services all lost jobs on net in February. Leisure and hospitality added 41,000 workers, manufacturing 18,000 and construction 26,000.

The “Pay Insights” data was uneventful this month. Pay growth for so-called job “stayers” was steady at 4.7%. For “switchers” it was 6.7%.

Count the ADP readout as just one more piece of evidence to support a slowdown narrative which has short-end traders fully pricing three Fed cuts for 2025 with some odds of a fourth. That’s a euphemistic way of saying the US rates complex — including and especially 10-year yields, which the administration’s keen to see lower, just preferably not due to the perception of an oncoming recession — is increasingly concerned about a “hard landing.” That’d be the hard landing that almost no professional money managers thought possible earlier this month.

Recall that just a few weeks ago, the prospect of a “sudden stop” for the US economy was considered so remote that it scarcely merited mention. In the February installment of BofA’s Global Fund Manager survey, subjective “hard landing” odds loitered near record lows since the bank first started asking the question. (That’s your fees at work, folks.)

“Our data, combined with other recent indicators, suggests a hiring hesitancy among employers as they assess the economic climate ahead,” Richardson added, of the private payrolls slowdown.

Thankfully, the government’s always hiring. Right? Right?!