U.S. employers added just 73,000 jobs last month as labor market weakens in face of Trump trade wars

Help wanted sign is displayed at a live music and blues club in Chicago, Thursday, July 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added just 73,000 jobs last month and Labor Department revisions showed that hiring was much weaker than previously reported in May and June. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 per cent.

The deterioration in the job market is taking place with companies paralyzed by uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies.

The Labour Department reported Friday that revisions shaved a stunning 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls.

The stock market tumbled on the news.

There are subtle signs that the labor market has been weakening for months, however.

New college graduates are struggling to break into the job market. The unemployment rate for college graduates 22 to 27 years old, reached 5.8 per cent in March, the highest, excluding the pandemic, since 2012, and far above the nationwide unemployment rate.

Many Americans are staying in their jobs, unwilling to start the job hunt, because they believe this is as good as it gets, and there is growing evidence that they’re right: Few industries are actually hiring aggressively.

The current situation is a sharp reversal from the hiring boom of just three years ago when desperate employers were handing out signing bonuses and introducing perks such as Fridays off, fertility benefits and even pet insurance to recruit and keep workers.

Employers added an average 130,000 jobs a month through June, down 23 per cent from last year’s hiring and a whopping 68 per cent below the 2021 to 2023 average when the economy was bounding back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Weighing on the job market are the lingering effects of higher interest rates that were used by the Federal Reserve to fight inflation; President Donald Trump’s massive import taxes and the costs and uncertainty they are imposing on businesses; and an anticipated drop in foreign workers as the president’s massive deportation plans move forward.

“The labour market is poised for a summer slowdown as businesses put hiring plans on hold but refrain from broad-based layoffs,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon wrote in a commentary this week. “We see job growth slowing well below trend in the coming months.’’

Still, most American workers enjoy an unusual level of job security. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, remains at healthy levels.

But Adam Schickling, senior economist at Vanguard, cautions that “a low unemployment rate and a muted pace of layoffs mask underlying weakness.’’

In a commentary Tuesday, Schickling wrote that the health of the job market “can be a matter of individual perspective...If you’re a registered nurse, you may believe the job market’s health to be excellent. The unemployment rate for experienced health care practitioners is currently below two per cent. If you’re young and just entering the labor force or you’re older and seeking to reenter it, prospects may seem bleak.’’

The rate of people quitting their jobs, a sign they’re confident they can land something better, has fallen from the record heights of 2021 and 2022 and is now below where it stood before the pandemic.

For one thing, hiring has become concentrated in a handful of industries. So far this year, for example, private U.S. employers have added 644,000 jobs. Of those, nearly 405,000 — or 63 per cent — were in just one of the Labour Department’s industry categories: healthcare and social assistance, which spans everything from hospitals to daycare centers.

As hiring has cooled over the past couple of years it’s become harder for young people or those re-entering the workforce to find jobs, leading to longer job searches or spells of unemployment. The Labour Department said the number of discouraged workers, who believe no jobs are available for them, rose by 256,000 in June to 637,000.

“Historically, a decline in hiring has been accompanied by a swift rise in layoffs, a one-two punch that drives up the unemployment rate,” Schickling wrote in a commentary. “Today’s labor market is defying that pattern.’’

One reason is that manufacturing companies, which tend to pull the trigger on layoffs quickly when economic conditions weaken, account for an ever-smaller share of American jobs. “So there is simply less headcount to cut,’’ he said.

The bottom line: “Firms are pulling back on hiring without shedding existing workers in significant numbers,’’ Schickling said. “The result is a labor market that is softening gradually, not collapsing.’’

Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press