Live Updates: U.S. Job Growth Expected to Have Slowed in April
Economists expect hiring fell back to 138,000 positions in April, from 228,000 in March. After a month of volatile trading, Wall Street will be scrutinizing the report for signs of restrained growth in the economy.
The government’s monthly employment report is set to be released Friday morning, with tensions high among consumers and businesses now bracing for the financial impact of the Trump administration’s worldwide tariff campaign.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the data for April to show that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2 percent, while job growth slowed to 138,000 from 228,000 in March.
Although President Trump had been telegraphing his intention to institute high tariffs since reassuming office in January, the White House did not put those import taxes into effect until early April. So if employers have substantially pulled back on hiring, that shift may not show up in official data until other reports capture it in the coming weeks and months.
Data released this week showed that the U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of the year — largely a result of a surge in imports as firms and households bought goods to try to get ahead of the tariffs.
White House officials have downplayed the early consequences of the president’s tariffs. But a broad range of economists are concerned that the dip in growth will not be isolated as businesses, especially those that rely on supplies from China, pull back on activity until tariffs are either reduced or locked in at a predictable level.
Several large companies, including General Motors, Stellantis and UPS, have pulled their forecasts for the year as a result of uncertainty surrounding Mr. Trump’s trade approach.
“Looking ahead, we expect the steep tariff increases and the surge in uncertainty and financial market volatility will result in a more pronounced labor market downshift than previously anticipated,” said Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at the consulting firm EY.
“Large cuts to the federal work force and the cancellation of many government contracts will also be a drag on payroll growth in coming months,” she added, “while tighter immigration flows will weigh on labor supply dynamics, further constraining job growth.”
Ms. Boussour and her forecasting colleagues believe the unemployment rate will continue to rise this year, reaching 5 percent.
European shares joined a global rally amid signs that trade tensions between the U.S. and China may be de-escalating. The Europe-wide STOXX 600 index rose around 1 percent, while markets in Germany, France and Britain also jumped. Yields on eurozone government bonds rose.
International visitation has been one of the earliest signs that President Trump’s agenda may be harming the U.S. economy.
The latest data from the Commerce Department shows that in March, 11.6 percent fewer people visited from overseas, relative to the same month a year earlier. That data is preliminary, so it excludes Canadian travelers and people coming from Mexico by land crossings. It may also have been influenced by the timing of Easter, which came later this year. A wider range of data shows a more complex picture, but future bookings appear to be down substantially.
The slump comes as the White House ramps up scrutiny of foreign travelers, creating fear that tourists coming to vacation in America may be detained at the border. Some prospective visitors have also been turned off by America’s rapid-fire tariff policies.
There’s a lot to lose. Foreign business and leisure travelers spent $215 billion in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That figure includes a lot of hotel stays, cab rides, dinners out and concert tickets.
That spending is mostly concentrated in a few states, like New York and Florida. But it’s also very important to a handful of smaller ones, like Louisiana, where Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has warned that a decline in foreign tourism will be a drag.
For tourism professionals, the alarm bells are muted by a few factors. Domestic travelers make up a much larger share of hospitality and entertainment spending. In the event of an economic downturn, they’re likely to stay domestic, rather than go to Paris, Tokyo or Patagonia.
And while international travelers may be spooked by instability in the United States, it doesn’t usually last for long.
“It’s not that they don’t come, they just postpone,” said Alan Fyall, a professor of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida. “They’ll wait six months and then come. We had these issues five or six years ago, and tourism came back really quickly. It always comes back, because people like to travel.”
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U.S. stock futures are rising, pointing to a positive opening when the markets open, as investors are encouraged by signs of a possible thawing of tensions between the United States and China. But the jobs report looms, capping a week of data that included signs of a slowdown in the economy.
The U.S. economy shrank at an 0.3 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, as consumers and businesses struggled with the uncertainty caused by President Trump’s trade policies.
The economy is contracting, companies are reporting losses and consumers are tightening their belts.
As dour as the economic data has been this week, President Trump continues to insist his policies are working.
Ahead of a closely watched — and unpredictable — jobs report released Friday morning, Mr. Trump has sought to take an early victory lap for his first 100 days in office, dismissing the many signs indicating the U.S. economy may be on the cusp of a painful downturn.
Instead, Mr. Trump has heralded his pursuit of steep tariffs and tax cuts as the ingredients for an imminent boom. And he has pinned the blame for any turbulence on his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden, despite the economy being quite strong when Mr. Trump inherited it.
“This is Biden’s economy because we took over on Jan. 20,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday during a speech at the White House, even as he encouraged the public to “get us a little bit of time to get moving.”
This week, the U.S. government reported that the nation’s gross domestic product, a measure of its economic output, slowed in the first three months of the year. The 0.3 percent decline followed years of steady growth after the coronavirus pandemic.
Some of the country’s largest consumer-oriented companies, including McDonald’s and PepsiCo, reported lower sales in the last quarter, suggesting consumers are starting to spend less as they become more anxious about the economy. General Motors warned analysts on Thursday about losses on the horizon, foreshadowing a costly disruption throughout the auto industry. Japan slashed its growth outlook, a move hinting at the widening fallout from Mr. Trump’s trade policies. And U.S. financial markets recorded their worst first 100 days of any presidency in about a half century as investors remained jittery about the trade war.
Each of the developments appeared to signify an economy at its tipping point, but the president largely swatted away those sour marks this week. In a series of speeches and public appearances, he maintained that his tariffs — including the eye-watering 145 percent rate specifically applied to goods from China — had already forced nations to negotiate deals while encouraging more companies to invest in U.S.-based manufacturing.
“They’ve drained us — now, we’re doing it to them,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Tuesday.
But the administration has not yet announced any trade agreements, nor has the president acknowledged any substantive talks with China. This week, Mr. Trump eased some, but not all, of his tariffs on automakers, in a bid to spare the industry from deep financial pain. But he also promised to “slaughter” those companies unless they quickly started making more of their products in the United States.
In an interview that aired Tuesday evening on ABC, Mr. Trump stood by his previous assertion that there would be a “transition period” for the economy. His comments seemed to echo his earlier contention that he could not rule out a recession stemming from his tariff policies.
Still, the president added, “I think great times are ahead.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump dismissed the effects of rising prices. At a cabinet meeting, he doubled down on his plan to apply tariffs to lower-valued products from China and other countries that had for years exploited a legal loophole that exempted them from having to pay duties.
“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” Mr. Trump said. “They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which, not all of it, but much of which we don’t need.”
He later added: “I really believe that the next 100 days is going to be even better than this.”
A rally in global stocks continued in Asia, lifted by news that China would consider holding trade talks with the United States. Markets in China were closed for a holiday, but the benchmark index in Hong Kong jumped 1.7 percent. Stocks rose 1 percent in Japan and 2.7 percent in Taiwan.
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Investors will be closely watching the jobs report on Friday for any signs that President Trump’s early policy priorities, including tariffs and layoffs of federal workers, have started to dent the U.S. economy.
Wall Street remains on edge about — and heavily influenced by — Mr. Trump’s trade wars and their potential to prompt an economic slowdown, putting fresh economic data and corporate earnings reports in the spotlight. The jobs report for April, which has the potential to fuel or ease angst on Wall Street depending on the strength of the employment figures, comes as stocks have stabilized in recent days. Investors have latched onto proclamations from administration officials about positive trade negotiations taking place behind the scenes, even as many of those claims have been rebuffed.
The S&P 500 was 1.4 percent higher for the week through Thursday, further buoyed by strong earnings reports from technology giants. Meta said on Wednesday that it anticipated continued growth despite Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
The Trump administration’s assertions since April 9 about progress in trade talks, which investors have welcomed as a sign that the White House might be paying more attention to the stock market, followed a dramatic two-day sell-off spurred by Mr. Trump’s unveiling of his suite of tariffs on April 2. The S&P 500 tumbled more than 10 percent in two days, a drop comparable to some of the worst days of the pandemic-induced sell-off in March 2020 and the financial crisis in 2008.
When markets closed on April 8 — the day before the tariffs were set to take effect — the S&P 500 had fallen 18.9 percent below its previous peak, in February. With the market continuing to fall, Mr. Trump announced on April 9 that he would pause, for 90 days, the most punitive tariffs on all countries except China. Stocks rallied, with the S&P 500 recording its best day since 2008.
Mr. Trump’s ramped-up attacks on the people and institutions underpinning U.S. exceptionalism, such as Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, have also prompted drastic daily swings in recent weeks. His threats aimed at Mr. Powell unnerved investors who see the central bank’s independence as critical to the health of the U.S. economy. And Mr. Trump’s subsequent remarks — that he had “no intention” of firing the Fed chair — fueled a rally, underscoring the extent to which investors are swayed by off-the-cuff comments from him and other officials.
That persistent unease and uncertainty sits in the backdrop of the relative calm in the stock market ahead of the fresh employment data. Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause of many of his tariffs, which put the market’s meltdown on hold, will end in July, risking more bouts of volatility.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed his predecessor for the market turmoil.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.”
