U.S. employers add a solid 151,000 jobs last month though unemployment up to 4.1%
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added solid 151,000 jobs last month, but the outlook is cloudy as President Donald Trump threatens a trade war, purges the federal workforce and promises to deport millions of immigrants.
The Labor Department reported Friday that hiring was up from a revised 125,000 in January. Economists had expected 160,000 new jobs last month.
The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1% as the number jobless Americans rose by 203,000.
Employment rose in health care, finance and transportation and warehousing. The federal government shed 10,000 jobs, the most since June 2022, though economists don’t expect Trump’s federal layoffs to have much of an impact until the March jobs report. Restaurants and bars cut nearly 28,000 jobs last month on top of a loss of almost 30,000 in January.
“The labor market continues to hold up, but we’re still a far cry from where we were a year or two years ago,’’ said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo.
House expects hiring to slow and unemployment to creep higher as Trump continues to cut spending on programs and slash the federal workforce, while imposing tariffs on America's trading partners.
The spending cuts “are likely to spill over into the private sector, hitting contractors and nonprofits, and we still have a trade war that is picking up,’’ House said. “There are multiple battles for the labor market to fight off, multiple shocks it’s having to work through in the months ahead.’’
The economy’s unexpectedly strong recovery from the pandemic recession of 2020 set loose an inflationary surge that peaked in June 2022 when prices came in 9.1% higher than they’d been a year earlier.
