Market News: ADP jobs and Home Depot earnings

November 18, 2025

ADP Jobs Data

ADP is a payroll processing company.   They process payrolls for roughly a quarter of all the workers in the US.  As such, they’ve got a pretty good insight into how many people are getting hired and fired every week.   Their research division is now publishing weekly estimates of total jobs turnover for the entire country.   And so… how are things?   Well… not great.

ADP reported that weekly average payrolls started shrinking in late October and into November.  In other words, the total number of people employed in America is now falling.   In case you were unsure, that’s bad.   That’s typically a pretty good sign of a recession.  

Why might it NOT be a recession?  Well, some folks are arguing that since immigration has been turned off, the supply of workers has shrunk.  At the same time, demand for workers is shrinking.  So a “happy” explanation would be that we are in this weird stasis zone, where things aren’t really growing or shrinking.  They’re just stable.   The main problem with that argument is that’s never happened before.  The economy is always growing or shrinking.  There’s never been a prolonged period of just “flat”.  

Home Depot (HD) Earnings

Home Depot reported earnings this morning, and they were weak across the board.  Mgmt attributed the weakness to fewer than expected major storms, which lessened the demand for storm recovery gear and operations.  That might be true.  But these days, corporate management teams are scared of the White House. They’re scared of mentioning things that might result in a negative Presidential Truth Social Post … which would then lead to a boycott.   So the truth is, we don’t know for sure what’s going on.  

For both Lowe’s and Home Depot, they make all their profits in the back of the store – in the home remodeling section.  That’s the stuff that has high profit margins.  So maybe the tariffs on kitchen cabinets are having an impact?  Or maybe a lack of immigrant workers are causing demand to fall off?  It’s hard to say.   But the results are sluggish.