Four sectors added more jobs than ADP's entire 90,000 September total

The four sectors Fortune itemised add up to 109,000 jobs ^[1]. ADP's total is 90,000 ^[1], so every other private industry combined shed a net 19,000 in September ^[2]. Manufacturing and construction together supplied 32,000 of the gain ^[4], about 36% of the net figure ^[5].

Fortune ties the strength in both to the AI infrastructure buildout ^[6]. The ADP figures as reported do not separate data-center work from other building, so that link rests on what people in the trades and at the Fed say they are seeing.

Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed, put it most sharply. "I would characterize the expansion of the data centers as very hot, but largely shoving other parts of the economy down," he told Fortune ^[10]. If he is right, construction's net gain is data-center hiring minus work cut elsewhere. He did not leave it at a reshuffle. He said this amounts to a sector rebalance, which is different from aggregate overheating, but added that it is not far from turning into aggregate overheating ^[12].

Ed Brady, president and CEO of the Home Builders Institute ^[18], described the supply side. "We're losing more than we're bringing into the industry. So this problem is going to be accentuated even before it is improved," Brady told Fox Business ^[7]. He called these "six-figure jobs" and said people coming out of high school making $30 an hour have the opportunity to own their own business ^[8]. Forty hours a week for 52 weeks at $30 comes to $62,400 ^[6]. On Brady's own telling, the six figures sit further up, with the business those graduates might one day own ^[8].

Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said she was "watchful" but did not see enough wage overheating in the data to be alarmed about the wider economy ^[14]. "What we're seeing now is more structural. This is not just AI, this is demographics," she said ^[15]. She drew the line at a spiral: "whether this is enough to tilt the balance of the labor market into a wage spiral, I do not think so" ^[16].

The September print fits three readings. In Goolsbee's, data centers keep outbidding other users of trade labor until the sector premium turns into overheating across the economy ^[12][13]. In Richardson's, skills and demographics keep the pressure inside the trades ^[15][16]. In the third, the trades post modest net hiring while higher pay, and projects shelved elsewhere, absorb the shortage ^[9][11].

I think the evidence supports tight trade labor more firmly than it supports the AI attribution. Construction's exception in the New York Fed wage data ^[9] and the plans Goolsbee hears are being scaled back ^[11] both show demand running ahead of supply. Neither separates data centers from the demographics Richardson cites ^[15]. The view fails if construction wage growth falls back toward the decline the New York Fed found across most industries while data-center building carries on ^[9].