“A strong report.”

That’s how ADP chief economist Nela Richardson described Wednesday’s nonfarm payrolls appetizer, which showed private sector employers added a net 90,000 jobs this month. That ostensibly bodes well for Friday’s main course from the BLS.

The headline ADP print topped estimates comfortably, even if it didn’t count as any sort of barnburner. Revisions were negligible.

As the figure shows, 90,000 counts as the best showing since June, and the month-to-month acceleration was the first since May. The three-month average slipped to 56,000 as June’s 95,000 headline was replaced by September’s readout.

“After a three-month slowdown, job creation rebounded and pay growth remained solid,” Richardson said, in the editorial accompanying the release.

By firm size, hiring was broad-based. Every bucket — i.e., from the smallest businesses to the largest — added jobs this month. On the goods side of the economy, construction and manufacturing hired nearly 30,000 people between them. In services, gains were led by the usual suspects: Education and health services and leisure and hospitality.

The only real blight was professional and business services, which lost another 11,000 jobs in September on top of 15,000 in August.

As the figure above reminds you, job losses in that category sum to nearly half a million since ChatGPT launched.

All in all, the ADP release was an encouraging update on the US labor market at a time when elevated prices and soaring rates continue to pile pressure on American households, who’ve scarcely ever felt worse about their economic prospects. Indeed, this report clashed with the message from the deteriorating labor differential in the Conference Board confidence survey.

From the Fed’s perspective, there was nothing in the ADP numbers to suggest the Committee should be more concerned about the labor market than inflation, which is to say this report, at least, argues for another hike on October 28.