U.S. Employers have apparently responded to the swiftly changing nature of the economy under President Donald Trump by slowing down hiring, according to a report released by payroll company ADP.

According to the ADP National Employment Report for April, the private sector saw just 62,000 new jobs added last month, down from 147,000 in March and far below the 120,000 forecast by the Dow Jones consensus estimate.

“Unease is the word of the day. Employers are trying to reconcile policy and consumer uncertainty with a run of mostly positive economic data. It can be difficult to make hiring decisions in such an environment,” ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson said along with the release of the report.

The report also shows that pay for people who stayed in the same job has gone up by 4.5% compared to April of last year, which is a slight downturn from March’s report, while “year-over-year pay gains for job-changers accelerated, rising from 6.7 percent in March to 6.9 percent in April.”

Leisure and hospitality saw the largest gains, with 27,000 jobs added, while education and health services saw the worse cuts with 23,000 jobs lost.

ADP’s report shows that New England accounts for a large portion of the poor numbers, with 33,000 jobs lost in the month of April.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release April jobs numbers on Friday, which are expected to come in slightly higher than ADP’s estimate, as those reports include government job data.

ADP’s April snapshot comes as the BLS released a detailed March report that shows the greater Boston region lost jobs when compared to the same period last year.

“Total nonfarm employment for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH, metropolitan area stood at 2,731,400 in March 2025 compared to 2,739,100 a year ago,” BLS wrote in its release, with Regional Commissioner William Sibley noting the slip is not “statistically significant.”

Meanwhile and elsewhere, according to BLS, the number of employed people increased nationally in March by 1.2% year-over-year. Among the nation’s largest cities, the New York City region saw the biggest gains, followed by Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Washington D.C.

Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, like Boston, all saw employment numbers fall in March, according to BLS.

The “Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area” includes Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk Counties in Massachusetts, and Rockingham and Strafford Counties in New Hampshire.

In addition to the jobs numbers, government economists reported Wednesday that the U.S. economy contracted at the start of the year for the first time since 2022 on a monumental pre-tariffs import surge and more moderate consumer spending.

Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product decreased an annualized 0.3% in the first quarter, well below average growth of about 3% in the prior two years, according to the government’s initial estimate published Wednesday.

Consumer spending also slowed sharply — to 1.8% growth from 4% in October-December last year. Federal government spending plunged 5.1% in the first quarter.

Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet had, on average, expected the economy to eke out 0.8% growth in the first quarter.