US jobs report: Hiring slows amid uncertainty over economy

WASHINGTON AP U S employers slowed hiring last month but still added a solid jobs amid uncertainty over Trump s commerce wars Related Articles Americans filing for jobless benefits at highest level in eight months Amazon AI tech crafted in South Bay could speed same-day deliveries Bay Area tech workers endure grim as major companies reveal layoffs US job openings rose in April a sign of labor territory s resilience Disney fires hundreds in film TV as industry woes drag on Hiring fell from a revised in April the Department of Labor revealed Friday The unemployment rate stayed at Trump s aggressive and unpredictable policies especially his sweeping taxes on imports have muddied the outlook for the financial market and the job domain and raised fears that the American business activity could be headed toward recession But so far the damage hasn t shown up clearly in ruling body economic evidence Economists expect Trump s policies to take a toll on America s economic activity the world s largest His massive taxes on imports tariffs are expected to raise costs for U S companies that buy raw materials equipment and components from overseas and force them to cut back hiring or even lay off workers Billionaire Elon Musk s Department of Leadership Efficiency DOGE has slashed federal workers and cancelled leadership contracts Trump s crackdown on illegal immigration is expected to make it harder for businesses to find enough workers For the bulk part though any damage has yet to show up in the ruling body s economic details The U S financial sector and job industry have proven surprisingly resilient in current years When the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve raised their benchmark interest rate times in and the higher borrowing costs were widely expected to tip the United States into a recession Instead the market kept growing and employers kept hiring But former Fed economist Claudia Sahm warns that the job sector of isn t nearly as durable as the two or three years ago when immigrants were pouring into the U S job region and employers were posting record job openings Any signs of weakness in the figures this week would stoke fears of a recession again Sahm now chief economist at New Century Advisors wrote in a Substack post this week It s too soon to see the full effects of tariffs DOGE or other policies on the labor area softening now would suggest less resilience to those later effects raising the odds of a recession Latest economic reports have sent mixed signals The Labor Department revealed Tuesday that U S job openings rose unexpectedly to million in April seemingly a good sign But the same summary exhibited that layoffs ticked up and the number of Americans quitting their jobs fell a sign they were less confident they could find something better elsewhere Surveys by the Institute for Supply Management a arrangement group of purchasing managers located that both American manufacturing and services businesses were contracting last month And the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in eight months Jobless alleges a proxy for layoffs still remain low by historical standards suggesting that employers are reluctant to cut staff despite uncertainty over Trump s policies They likely remember how hard it was to bring people back from the massive but short-lived layoffs of the COVID- recession as the U S economic system bounced back with unexpected strength Still the job arena has clearly decelerated So far this year American employers have added an average jobs a month That is down from last year in in and a record in in the rebound from COVID- layoffs Trump s tariffs and the erratic way he rolls them out suspends them and conjures up new ones have already buffeted the economic activity America s gross domestic product the nation s output of goods and services fell at a annual pace from January through March this year A surge of imports shaved percentage points off increase during the first quarter as companies rushed to bring in foreign products ahead of Trump s tariffs Imports plunged by a record in April as Trump s levies took effect The drop in foreign goods could mean fewer jobs at the warehouses that store them and the trucking companies that haul them around wrote Michael Madowitz an economist at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute