The Businesses Creating the Most Jobs Right Now Have Fewer Than 20 Employees
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The trend has accelerated in 2026. From January through March, the smallest employers added 169,000 people, averaging 66,667 jobs per month, up from 43,833 per month in 2025. Through Q1, those tiny businesses created roughly 200,000 jobs while the entire U.S. private sector added 167,000 net new hires. Some larger small- and mid-sized employers actually cut more jobs than they added during that stretch. The big-company layoff cycle we’ve been tracking all month is showing up here in the data: large employers are shedding headcount while the smallest ones keep adding.
Small businesses are also holding their people. Turnover at firms with fewer than 50 employees hit a record low of 3.9% in March, the lowest in nine years of ADP tracking. We’ve covered this dynamic before, but the Q1 data makes the picture sharper. The pay gap is narrowing, too. Year-over-year pay growth at the smallest employers trailed large employer pay growth by just 2.3 percentage points in March 2026, down from a 3.8-point gap at the peak in May 2022.
On the weekly hiring side, ADP’s NER Pulse shows private employers added an average of 39,250 jobs per week for the four weeks ending April 11. Worth noting: ADP revised the prior week (April 4) sharply downward, from 54,750 to 40,250, a 14,500 revision in seven days. These figures are preliminary and subject to revision, which is exactly why single-week readings deserve skepticism. The directional trend still points upward, but that revision is a reminder to watch the trajectory rather than the individual data points.
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Nearly 70% of HR Professionals Still Can’t Fill Full-Time Roles. Here’s What’s Actually Working.
SHRM’s 2026 Talent Trends Report, based on a survey of 2,094 HR professionals conducted in February 2026, finds that 68% still face challenges recruiting for full-time positions, and 53% say it’s gotten harder over the past year. The labor market has cooled on paper, but the talent shortage hasn’t.
The skills gap is the persistent culprit. 80% of HR professionals say the hardest candidates to find are those with systems and resource management skills: judgment, decision-making, complex problem-solving, and time management. These are the fundamentals that separate a candidate who can do the job from one who can only interview for it.
What’s working is less conventional than most companies want to admit. 41% of HR professionals are now training existing employees to fill hard-to-fill roles rather than hiring externally, a meaningful shift in how organizations approach talent pipelines. Internal mobility and upskilling are increasingly the faster, cheaper path. Job rotation programs are rated 93% effective at addressing talent gaps by those who use them, but fewer than 25% of HR professionals are actually using them.
The social media stat is worth calling out for anyone spending budget on recruiting platforms: it’s the most commonly used strategy (59% of HR pros use it) and ranks ninth in effectiveness. Most companies are fishing in the same crowded pond with the same gear and wondering why the results are thin. Process and targeting beat platform reach every time.
83% of Workers Want Their Employer to Train Them on AI. Most Companies Haven’t.
Express Employment Professionals and Harris Poll surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. job seekers and more than 1,000 U.S. hiring decision-makers and found a gap that’s getting harder for companies to ignore. 83% of job seekers say companies need to formally train employees on how to use AI, not leave them to figure it out on their own. 86% of hiring managers agree. Both groups want the same thing. The training largely isn’t happening.
The adoption context makes the gap more urgent. 79% of U.S. companies now use AI, with 43% reporting regular use, up from 72% in spring 2025 and 66% two years ago. 89% of hiring managers say their company’s dependence on AI tools has grown over the past year. Companies are buying in fast. Workers are being handed powerful tools without guidance on how to use them, with 36% of companies providing a list of approved tools and 38% letting employees use whatever they’re already familiar with. That’s not a training strategy; it’s a hope.
The upside: workers want to learn. 75% say AI tools can help close skills gaps, and the same share say they’re likely to seek additional training themselves. As Bob Funk Jr., CEO of Express Employment International, put it: “Companies have focused on getting the technology in place, but not enough on helping people use it effectively.” For employers trying to compete for and retain talent right now, formal AI training is starting to look less like a benefit and more like a baseline expectation. Job seekers who build AI fluency on their own are going to have a real edge in a market where that training is still far from standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Businesses with fewer than 20 employees, according to ADP Research. They created 525,000+ jobs in 2025 (more than any other employer size group) and roughly 200,000 in Q1 2026 alone. Without them, the U.S. would have seen a net loss of private-sector jobs last year.
The overall market has softened, but the skills gap hasn’t. SHRM’s 2026 survey found 80% of HR professionals say the hardest candidates to find have systems and resource management skills: judgment, decision-making, and complex problem-solving. Cooling demand doesn’t fix a shortage of people who can actually do the work.
No legal requirement exists in most cases, but the pressure is building. An Express Employment-Harris Poll survey found 83% of job seekers and 86% of hiring managers believe formal AI training should be a company priority, and as adoption accelerates, companies that skip it risk falling behind on both productivity and retention.
Not social media, which 59% of HR pros use, but ranks ninth in effectiveness. SHRM’s data points to internal approaches: training existing employees for hard-to-fill roles (41% of HR pros are doing this) and job rotation programs, rated 93% effective by those who implement them.
