Employers Likely Added 40,000 Nov Jobs 12/16 06:01

   American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have. But 
they're reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use 
artificial intelligence and how to adjust to President Donald Trump's 
unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from 
around the world.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. job market was sluggish and confusing this fall.

   American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have. But 
they're reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use 
artificial intelligence and how to adjust to President Donald Trump's 
unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from 
around the world.

   The uncertainty leaves jobseekers struggling to find work or even land 
interviews. Federal Reserve policymakers are divided over whether the labor 
market needs more help from lower interest rates. Their deliberations are 
rendered more difficult because official reports on the economy's health are 
coming in late and incomplete after a 43-day government shutdown.

   The Labor Department is expected to provide at least a little clarity when 
it releases November numbers on hiring and unemployment Tuesday, 11 days late.

   Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet expect that employers added an 
unimpressive 40,000 jobs last month and that unemployment stayed at 4.4%, 
unchanged from the last rate published -- for September.

   Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over Trump's 
tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered 
in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an outburst of inflation.

   Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 
911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. 
That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over 
that period, not the 147,000 first reported. Since March, job creation has 
fallen farther -- to an average 59,000 a month.

   During the 2021-2023 hiring boom that followed COVID-19 lockdowns, by 
contrast, the economy was creating an average of 400,000 jobs a month.

   The unemployment rate, though still modest by historical standards, has 
risen since bottoming out at a 54-year low of 3.4% in April 2023.

   Adding to the uncertainty is the growing use of artificial intelligence and 
other technologies that can reduce demand for workers.

   "We've seen a lot of the businesses that we support are stuck in that 
stagnant mode: 'Are we going to hire or are we not? What can we automate? What 
do we need the human touch with?''' said Matt Hobbie, vice president of the 
staffing firm HealthSkil in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

   "We're in Lehigh Valley, which is a big transportation hub in eastern 
Pennsylvania. We've seen some cooling in the logistics and transportation 
markets, specifically because we've seen automation in those sectors, 
robotics.''

   Worries about the job market were enough to nudge the Fed into cutting its 
benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point last week for the 
third time this year.

   But three Fed officials refused to go along with the move, the most dissents 
in six years. Some Fed officials are balking at further cuts while inflation 
remains above the central bank's 2% target. Two voted to keep the rate 
unchanged. (Stephen Miran, appointed by Trump to the Fed's governing board in 
September, voted for a bigger cut -- in line with what the president demands.)

   Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned after last week's rate cut that the job 
market is even weaker than it appeared.

   Government data show that the economy has added less than 40,000 jobs a 
month since April. But even that overstates the pace of hiring, Powell said. He 
suspects that revisions could reduce payrolls by as much as 60,000 a month, 
which would mean employers haven't been adding jobs at all; instead, they've 
been cutting 20,000 a month since the spring. "It's a labor market that seems 
to have significant downside risks," Powell told reporters.

   Because of the government shutdown, the Labor Department did not release its 
jobs reports for September, October and November on time.

   It finally put out the September jobs report on Nov. 20, seven weeks late. 
It will publish some of the October data -- including a count of the jobs 
created that month by businesses, nonprofits and government agencies -- along 
with the November report Tuesday. But it will not release an unemployment rate 
for October because it could not calculate the number during the shutdown.

   The October numbers are expected to show a big drop in U.S. government jobs, 
reflecting the delayed impact of billionaire Elon Musk's purge of the federal 
workforce as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

   Analysts at Evercore ISI, a research outfit, noted in a commentary last week 
that about 150,000 federal workers agreed to take a buyout under pressure from 
DOGE -- and that 100,000 likely left the government when the 2025 fiscal year 
ended on Sept. 30, pushing down October payrolls. The remaining 50,000 stayed 
on for the rest of the calendar year and their departures will likely show up 
in the January 2026 jobs report.

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