Employer Services retention was strong in the second quarter. Although it declined slightly compared to the prior year, we once again exceeded our expectations as we continue to benefit from a healthy overall business environment, and from our very high client satisfaction levels. Our Employer Services pays per control growth remained at 2% for the second quarter. The overall labor market remains resilient, and our clients continue to add employees at a moderate pace, which is resulting in a very gradual deceleration and pays per control growth.
- And companies are still investing in their people, their talent.
- It is really a demonstration of our scale.
- Sometimes the States, as an example, make very strange decisions that aren’t always in line with what’s happening from a broader labor and unemployment perspective.
- ADP’s pay measure uniquely captures the earnings of a cohort of almost 10 million employees over a 12-month period.
We feel good about the demand environment overall at this point. We saw that this morning actually as well. And companies are still investing in their people, their talent. I think there are a couple things I’d highlight to you.
Only one sector — information services (-9,000) — reported a decline, but hiring was slow across virtually all sectors. January’s report presents the scheduled annual revision of the ADP National Employment Report, which updates the data series to be consistent with the annual Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) benchmark data for March 2023. In addition, this revision introduces technical updates, namely, in re-weighting of ADP data to match QCEW data. The historical file was updated to reflect these revisions.
One of those is State unemployment in terms of – obviously, we sit here today forecasting what that looks like. Most of those rates are issued throughout this quarter. And so, while we have some line of sight, in the end, we don’t know entirely what the State unemployment outcome – we do expect that it creates a little bit of a – rates are going down year-on-year again this year. Sometimes the States, adpwor as an example, make very strange decisions that aren’t always in line with what’s happening from a broader labor and unemployment perspective. So, all that to say, I think – I don’t know that I could sit here today and give you any componentry that seems strange or out of the norm. I think they’re all things we’re watching as we look toward the re-acceleration in the PEO in the back half.
What I would offer as well, we have record retention. We have record customer experience and client experience in international. So, I think we have a tremendous value proposition in international. By the way, some of the recognition I cited during the prepared remarks is really about how best-in-class our offer is with respect to the international offering we have.
In terms of from a demand perspective, I speak about the PEO all the time, as you know. I think the demand continues to be incredibly strong. I wouldn’t suggest that there’s anything unnatural that we are doing outside of a tremendous amount of focus across the enterprise to ensure that we’re executing on the PEO booking side. But in terms of anything unnatural or demand changing, I think the value proposition, as I always say, is stronger than it’s ever been. I think clients in that space are looking toward ADP to help them from a PEO value proposition. So, everything from payroll to benefits to navigating the complexity of being a business and having the ability to execute on a co-employment relationship.
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With respect to Convera as a partner, just to speak to that one a little bit, we have thousands of clients, and those thousands of clients have thousands of entities spread across multiple countries around the world. So, someone like Convera acts as a great partner for us to facilitate those cross-border payments in a very – in a compliant way, et cetera. So, I think that’s very positive for us.
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We’re paying close attention to it and certainly all the things that are happening kind of across that space. But I would suggest to you that we feel relatively solid about our pipelines and our ability to bring that business in the back half. Thank you, Maria, and good morning, everyone. I’ll provide more color on our results for the quarter, as well as our updated fiscal 2024 outlook.
We have solid pipelines really across the mid-market as well as off-market. The mid-market did incredibly well in the second quarter. From a competitive standpoint, I think https://adprun.net/ we get a lot of questions around the competitive landscape. What I would offer to you, it hasn’t really shifted. It’s been a competitive space per us for a long time.
As mentioned earlier, our ES retention declined slightly in Q2 versus the prior year, but again exceeded our expectations. Given our first half retention outperformance, we are increasing our full-year retention outlook slightly. We now anticipate a 40 to 60 basis point decline in our full-year retention, which is 10 basis points better than our prior forecast. During the second quarter, we launched a new brand advertising campaign themed, the next anything.
ADP Declares Regular Quarterly Dividend
It puts us on par with other industry leaders and the financial services, and really a competitive advantage against some of our HCM competitors that continue to leverage these third-party trustees. So, for us, I think it’s a big commitment to the business that we have, the retirement business that is, which really can matter to financial advisors, and as you said, CPAs and banks. Really by taking the trust services in-house, the implication is that we have better control over our costs. Ultimately, that yields a better price for our clients, a better service. We also have the ability to maintain all of the data inside of ADP’s ecosystem, which as you know, is a big component of who ADP is in terms of data integrity and all those things. So, that’s kind of the retirement trust services in a nutshell, Mark.
Because the underlying ADP payroll databases are continuously updated, the report provides a high-frequency, near real-time measure of U.S. employment. This measure reflects the number of employees on ADP client payrolls (Payroll Employment) to provide a richer understanding of the labor market. ADP’s pay measure uniquely captures the earnings of a cohort of almost 10 million employees over a 12-month period. Moving on to the PEO, we had 3% revenue growth, driven by 2% growth in average work site employees in the second quarter.
The budget cycle kicks off here in the next six, eight weeks or so, and we’ll certainly be looking at the pricing increases for next year and weighing all the regular factors, what’s inflation been? We thought our price increases were very well received last year. But as always, we’re always interested in the long-term value prop with our clients and being competitive in the market. So, we’re always measured, I believe, when we think about the price increases that we do hand out to our clients. No, I think you were right to call out the payroll deferral, payroll tax deferral.
So, we do have some partners in international like Convera as I just mentioned, but we still see it as a great opportunity for us to continue to grow. So, Bryan, ADP Assist is really the overarching, call it, brand, if you will, that we’re leveraging to talk through all the things that we’re putting into our product to make things easier. The way that I think about it is it’s really just the next phase of digital transformation for ADP using new tools and technology.
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Participating today are Maria Black, our President and CEO, and Don McGuire, our CFO. Earlier this morning, we released our results for the quarter. Our earnings materials are available on the SEC’s website and our Investor Relations website at investors.adp.com, where you will also find the investor presentation that accompanies today’s call.