Washington May 3 2025: U.S. job growth slowed marginally in April, but the outlook for the labor market is increasingly darkening as President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff policy heightens economic uncertainty.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 177,000 jobs last month after rising by a downwardly revised 185,000 in March, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its closely watched employment report on Friday.
The economy needs to create roughly 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.
The report is backward-looking and it is too early for the labor market to show the impact of Trump’s on-and-off again tariffs policy.
A flood of imports as businesses tried to get ahead of tariffs weighed on the economy in the first quarter.
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement ushered in sweeping duties on most imports from the United States’ trade partners, including boosting duties on Chinese goods to 145%, sparking a trade war with Beijing and tightening financial conditions.
