Did the US labor market just turn? Is the recession here? Should you board up the windows and stack the sandbags?

Probably not. But ADP registered an enormous miss on Wednesday, suggesting private employers were rattled in May by the economic uncertainty associated with on-again, off-again tariffs.

The headline printed just 37,000, an egregious miss to the 114,000 consensus and the second-worst showing since the summer of 2020.

The prior month was revised slightly lower to show a 60,000 gain. The three-month average is now just 81,000, the slowest in two years (and since mid-2020 if you don’t count a dip associated with an anomalous negative headline print in March of 2023).

Note that May’s report makes two months in a row that the headline was expected to print ~115,000 but came up dramatically short. By firm size, every bucket shed jobs in May besides businesses with between 50 and 249 employees, which added 51,000 positions.

“After a strong start to the year, hiring is losing momentum,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said Wednesday.

Leisure and hospitality led gains (where gains were made) with 38,000 hires, followed by financial activities, which chipped in 20,000.

The goods-producing sector lost 2,000 jobs on net. Manufacturing, drilling and mining shed 8,000 positions between them. Those are your Trumpers, folks. And they’re gettin’ laid off.

I wish I could tell you there was a silver lining in this release, but I’m not sure that’d be true. Basically, the numbers suggest the US economy hired waitstaff, bartenders and bankers last month and fired everybody else. On net, anyway.

Pay growth, at least, was steady at 4.5% YoY for those who stayed in their current roles and 7% for so-called “switchers.”