U.S. hiring likely slowed to 130,000 new jobs last month amid uncertainty over Trump’s policies

WASHINGTON AP The American job industry likely continued to slow last month hobbled by worries over President Donald Trump s arrangement wars deportations and purges of the federal workforce The Labor Department s numbers on May hiring Friday are expected to show that businesses ruling body agencies and nonprofits added jobs last month That would be down from in April but enough to stay ahead of people entering the workforce and keep the unemployment rate at a low according to a survey of forecasters by the input firm FactSet Mainstream economists expect Trump s policies to take a toll on America s commercial sector 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 workers off Billionaire Elon Musk s Department of Ruling body 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 majority of part though any damage has yet to show up in the cabinet s economic information The U S economic system and job domain have proven surprisingly resilient in latest 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 economic activity kept growing and employers kept hiring But former Fed economist Claudia Sahm warns that the job realm of isn t nearly as durable as the two or three years ago when immigrants were pouring into the U S job industry and employers were posting record job openings Any signs of weakness in the evidence 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 region 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 broadcasted Tuesday that U S job openings rose unexpectedly to million in April seemingly a good sign But the same summary revealed 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 deal group of purchasing managers identified 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 indicates 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 area 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 commercial sector 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 upsurge 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 Source