Job creation in the U.S. is demonstrating signs of slowing as wages remain flat.
That’s according to the monthly report on private sector employment released Wednesday (June 5) by ADP. It showed the private sector adding 152,000 jobs in May, down from 188,000 the month before.
The trend was driven, the report said, by a “steep decline in manufacturing,” with that sector losing 20,000 jobs in May. The leisure and hospitality space also saw hiring cool, adding 12,000 jobs in the month.
“Job gains and pay growth are slowing going into the second half of the year,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “The labor market is solid, but we’re monitoring notable pockets of weakness tied to both producers and consumers.”
Annual pay growth was at 5%, the same position it’s held for the last three months. Year-over-year pay increases for people changing jobs fell for the second month in a row, though pay for this group was up 7.8% month over month.
ADP’s findings came one day after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, showing that the number of job openings in the United States decreased by 4.8% in April.
There were 8.1 million job openings available on the last business day of April, down from 8.4 million in March, the BLS said. It marked the lowest number of job openings seen in more than three years, adding to data that indicates that the labor market is gradually cooling through slower hiring rather than layoffs.
The greatest drops in job openings in April were in healthcare and social assistance and in state and local government education, the BLS said, with declines of 204,000 and 59,000, respectively.
At the same time, April saw an increase of 50,000 job openings in private educational services, the bureau said. That dovetails with ADP’s figures for May, which showed 46,000 new jobs in the education/health services field.
Both these reports followed last week’s release of the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which — among other things — showed Americans’ views of labor market conditions improving.
Fewer respondents said jobs were “hard to get,” outweighing a small drop in the number who said jobs were “plentiful,” and fewer consumers said they expected a deterioration in future business conditions, job availability and income.
OpenAI’s CEO says the generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup has reached approximately 800 million people.
“Something like 10% of the world uses our systems, now a lot,” said Sam Altman, whose comments at a Friday (April 11) TED 2025 event were reported by Seeking Alpha.
Host Chris Anderson pointed out that Altman had said his company’s user base was growing rapidly, doubling in a “just a few weeks.”
The report noted that OpenAI’s growth has been helped along by viral features like the ability to generate images and videos in a range of styles, such as that of legendary Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli.
Last month, Altman said the company, maker of ChatGPT, had added a million users in one hour. Asked during the TED event if the company had considered compensating artists for creating works in their style, Altman said there could be prompts that could trigger payments for specific artists.
“I think it would be cool to figure out a new model where if you say, ‘I want to do it in the name of this artist,’ and they opt in, there’s a revenue model there,” Altman said.
Altman added the company had guidelines to prevent the AI model from generating images in the styles of specific artists or creators. He also discussed the company’s work on AI agents, models that can operate autonomously on behalf of users.
In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about ways the technology can help companies hoping to alleviate the cost of new tariffs. While those levies will eat into the bottom line of many businesses, AI can help reduce costs while ensuring productivity stays up.
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that 82% of workers who use generative AI at least weekly say it increases productivity, even though half of these workers also worry that AI would replace them at their jobs.
“AI can also facilitate material selection by assessing availability, compliance and cost implications, which helps brands find substitute materials when needed without compromising on quality or compliance with regulatory standards,” said Tarun Chandrasekhar, president and CPO at Syndigo.
Still, Pierre Laprée, chief product officer of SpendHQ, told PYMNTS that while AI has a part to play, it’s “misguided” to believe that AI will automatically offset rising costs from shifts in trade policy.
“Tariffs are complex, and so is procurement,” he said. “You need more than an algorithm — you need clean, structured, specific data. Without that, AI won’t reduce risk. It will amplify it.”
