The mounting economic challenges weakening the job market

Amna Nawaz:

Welcome to the "News Hour."

The U.S. economy added a modest 50,000 jobs last month. That was below expectations and capped the weakest year for job growth since the pandemic.

Geoff Bennett:

Employers added a total of 584,000 jobs in the U.S. for all of 2025, a big drop from the two million created in 2024. Layoffs still remain low, hiring is still steady, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4 percent.

Today, President Trump said it was an amazing report showing the strength of private hiring, and said any overall weakness was due to the government shutdown this past fall.

But as economics correspondent Paul Solman reports, it all points to a soft job market that's adding 100,000 fewer jobs a month compared to 2024.

Paul Solman:

2025 over. Headline for the job market?

Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics:

Job market's weak. The job market's not creating very many jobs at all.

Paul Solman:

Economist Mark Zandi. He says, if you look back to the start of President Trump's tariff regime, what the president called liberation day:

Mark Zandi:

The economy has not been able to create any jobs. And the job growth, we are getting, very narrowly concentrated in the health care sector, a bit in the hospitality, but, outside of that, we're seeing job loss and no job creation.

Paul Solman:

In fact, just about all the new jobs created last month were in health care, social assistance and leisure and hospitality, no change or losses pretty much everywhere else.

Also in today's report, downward revisions to the jobs created in previous months.

Mark Zandi:

In total, they subtracted another close to 70,000 jobs from payrolls. And this is not the end of it. There's a lot more revisions that are coming, and everything suggests that they will show even weaker job market.

Paul Solman:

So the job market since last January?

Mark Zandi:

It came into the year doing quite well. Job -- monthly job growth was 150,000, 175,000, but since the spring, liberation day, it's flatlined. There's been no job growth, some months up a little bit, some months down, essentially going nowhere fast.

Paul Solman:

Especially, because while layoffs have been modest, there's been so little hiring.

Mark Zandi:

The length of unemployment is now becoming quite long. People just can't get back into the labor market.

Shana Pinnock-Glover, Job Seeker:

I know the exact date. Got laid off February 10, 2025.

Paul Solman:

Thirty-eight-year-old Shana Pinnock-Glover lost her job as a high-level social media director nearly a year ago. A professional with 15 years of experience, she's been looking for 11 months.

Shana Pinnock-Glover:

The job search emotionally is incredibly frustrating. It is -- it can take you from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

Paul Solman:

How many jobs do you think you have applied for either very seriously or at least somewhat seriously?

Shana Pinnock-Glover:

And last I checked, I believe I was at some 860-something.

Paul Solman:

How many times have you gotten an interview of those 860-some-odd?

Shana Pinnock-Glover:

In the last 11 months, I have had -- I think I have interviewed with maybe nine or 10 companies.

Paul Solman:

Pinnock-Glover is just one of many Black Americans whom the labor market has been hammering. The Black unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, well above its record low in 2023, and nearly double the white unemployment rate.

Andre Perry, Brookings Institution:

It can't be explained by a lack of education or a lack of willingness.

Paul Solman:

Andre Perry studies race and economics at the Brookings Institution.

Andre Perry:

It's a phrase that we have heard since I can remember, last hired, first fired, and it's a phrase known too well by Black and brown people, that Black workers are disproportionately impacted by economic downturns.

Paul Solman:

And what about the Trump administration's anti-DEI campaign?

Have you felt the effects in the job market of the anti-DEI backlash, do you think?

Shana Pinnock-Glover:

Yes, and that is what a lot of us are feeling, almost demoralizing aspects of all of this, because we know that we are qualified.

Paul Solman:

Another cohort feeling the current crunch, the young.

Angel Escobedo, Job Seeker:

I have been applying, actively applying for a little over a year now.

Paul Solman:

A process that started long before 22-year-old Angel Escobedo graduated college last month with degrees in finance and management.

How many jobs have you applied to in, I don't know, last six, seven months, and how many interviews have you got?

Angel Escobedo:

So I have applied, I want to say to a little over 100 positions over the past six, seven months, and I have gotten probably less than 10 interviews.

Paul Solman:

So what are your friends doing if they can't get a job?

Angel Escobedo:

A lot of people are turning back to applying for the master's degree to actually get more experience on the resume, so they can then go find a job.

Paul Solman:

And hide out from the job market?

Angel Escobedo:

Exactly, yes.

Paul Solman:

The unemployment rate for Escobedo and his peers, Americans younger than 25, 10.4 percent, more than double the overall rate, and up from 6.6 percent in 2023.

Christine Cruzvergara, Handshake:

We are seeing job postings down 15 percent compared to last year, while the class of 2026 is actually submitting 23 applications per full-time job, which is up 8 percent compared to last year.

Paul Solman:

Christine Cruzvergara works with college students to help them get jobs.

Christine Cruzvergara:

So there are less jobs and more people applying for those jobs. That leads to more competition and a feeling of anxiousness amongst many of our early talent candidates.

Paul Solman:

How much is due to A.I.?

Christine Cruzvergara:

We are seeing employers either decide to cut head count or slow down their hiring because they're trying to figure out whether or not they need to allocate some of that money towards the use of A.I. adoption, which has dollar costs to it. Or they're trying to figure out, in the future, could I actually continue to grow my business?

Paul Solman:

But it's not just A.I., says Cruzvergara.

Christine Cruzvergara:

There's also government influence and pressure. There's interest rates. There's tariffs. All of those pieces are coming together and kind of converging at a moment where it's impacting the numbers.

Paul Solman:

One number on seemingly everyone's mind, the federal funds rate, and what today's report means for interest rates.

Mark Zandi:

We're not creating any jobs and unemployment is moving in the wrong direction. There's no hiring. All that adds up to reasons for the Fed to continue to cut rates at least one more, perhaps two or three more times in early 2026.

Paul Solman:

The Fed meets later this month.

For the "PBS News Hour," Paul Solman.

Geoff Bennett:

One other story tied to the jobs report, President Trump disclosed some of that key data on a TRUTH Social post last night, well in advance of today's release.

The president posted a chart focusing on growth in the private sector, matching in part what came out publicly this morning. The jobs data is typically highly guarded until it's released because it can move markets. The White House said it was -- quote -- "an inadvertent public disclosure" and that it would review its protocols.