CNBC in its coverage said, “The report shows the labor market has been “pretty much stable for a year, year and a half,” Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve of Chicago, said in a CNBC interview. “I characterize that we’ve been stable without being good. ... The unemployment rate has been stable, the hiring rate’s been stable, the layoff rate’s been stable, the vacancy rate has been stable. So, I still think there’s not a lot of evidence that the job market is falling apart.”
While it cheered the White House and other administration officials, to others it still seemed to be a cautious praise at best, with higher than sough inflation, and the effects that the War on Iran, and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz which has hampered the delivery of 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas resulting in an average per gallon price of gasoline at $4.59 per gallon in the United States.
During his State of the Union address, President Trump declared that America under his leadership was “bigger, better, richer, and stronger” and created a “booming economy” now words that he may regret saying, especially with his polls tanking, those efforts will undoubtedly be on the way.
The Associated Press-NORC-Center for Public Affairs recently reported that his support in the GOP fell from 74 percent to 62 percent in April, a stark figure among his base of support. Adding to that, 61 percent of Americans do not support the US in its war against Iran. A devolution in his handling of the economy is not far behind, especially with 80 percent of Americans feeling the price squeeze at the gas pump.
While wages increased to 3.6 percent, Americans are now forced to spend much of that increase on gasoline, especially those people who live in areas where public transportation is scarce; and, add to that the spectre of even higher food costs due to increased transportation costs, then the results for many Americans may be burdensome, especially lower income individuals and families as they struggle to meet higher housing costs in a country that has not created enough of them.
Of equal concern is that job increases may not meet population growth as we reported in April, and where some demographers have said the nation has fallen behind,
While the unemployment rate is 4.3 percent it could have been higher had not some people simply given up looking for work in a challenging environment, especially for those without college degrees.
A conundrum is that consumers are still spending, and while they are the economic drivers of the national economy the reasons for their continuance bear examining;f or,one case, higher than average tax returns are one cause, interest rate cuts by the Fed last year are another, and, lastly, is that high income earners are still spending, it supports the often quoted K shaped economy. But economists say that might not last forever, and if consumers continue to cut back on spending to afford fuel, the consequences, according to Investopedia, would cause “a ripple effect that hurts the job market. Some forecasters unemployment to rise as soon as this summer.”
Overall, this is an economy that has its visible markers, as well as its less visible ones, notably that job creation has consistently been higher in the small business community, commonly referred by some as the “Mom and Pop” market, where recent analysis has shown that for companies with less than 20 employees they have created more than 525,000 jobs in 2025; and in January through March 169,000 jobs, a figure greater than by larger employers.
The recent back and forth on a resolution to end the conflict in Iran has caused the markets to go from high to low, often in less than 24 hours; a figure that some observers are attributing to President Trump’s vacillating remarks that the war is over, and there is another resolution pending, but then, also saying that there is no Iranian leadership to negotiate with; all of which has made the market indices seasick trying to keep up.
One prominent feature of the last several months of job reports is the dominance of health care related jobs, attributable to the aging of America, and the needs of the so called “baby boomers” whose longevity requires consistent care. As has been noted, economic observers are wondering of the precariousness of the jobs outlook where one industry dominates all the others. For April this dominance resulted in a gain of 37,000 jobs.
Likewise social assistance of 17,000 jobs gained and attendant home health care of 11,000. Common knowledge dictates this as a historical legacy but its dominance could cut into future gains, or losses for other industries.
On the down side is the continuing loss of federal workers, begun last year at the beginning of the second Trump administration, now with 9,000 additional jobs cut.
On the corporate side, cuts have been rampant lately with those at META, and now the bankrupt Spirit Airlines.
The news that Meta plans to cut approximately 10% of its workforce—roughly 8,000 employees—starting May 20, 2026, “alongside 6,000 open role closures to fund massive AI investments” according to the New York Times CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who deemed 2026 "the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work," expects to offset high infrastructure investment costs while driving efficiencies.
“Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said he expects much of the work done in the technology industry to eventually be overtaken by A.I.-powered systems, including coding assistants that help engineers write software.”
“We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief people officer, said in the memo to employees. “This is not an easy trade-off and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here.”
Tech and other informational services have been on the downswing for some time and the April report shows this is a continuing trend with a loss of 13,000, and telecommunications another 3,000.
While the effects of the two months of war with Iran has only slightly affected the US, despite the higher gas prices, the resulting effect on the global economy has been harsh: “The fallout from two months of war in Iran is shuttering textile mills in India and Bangladesh, grounding airplanes in Ireland, Poland and Germany, and prompting energy rationing in Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand. The only country, it seems, that has been relatively spared from the economic chaos is the one that started the war: the United States,” also reported by The New York Times.
“While warning signs of a recession are flashing across countries in Asia and Europe, the United States is likely to outperform most of the world’s advanced economies. Growth is steady and unemployment low. “It’s still hard to bet against the U.S. economy,” the Royal Bank of Canada said last week.”
If the aggression lasts much longer then the effect on US jobs market will increase, despite the repeal of most of the Trump tariffs from the recent decision from the US Supreme Court; but, with recent threats on Spain for not supporting the administration's efforts to open the Strait, an area freight with danger, tariffs will once more be a factor facing American companies, and in turn consumers.
“Economists say it would take a much more significant spike in oil prices, perhaps as high as $150 a barrel, for them to begin worrying seriously about the possibility of a recession in the United States.
That is not the case elsewhere, where the dreaded combination of slower growth and higher inflation is already raising alarms about stagflation.”
Are we safe? Maybe, say some, again from the Times: “For the United States, the biggest advantage is that, unlike most of its global peers, it produces more oil and gas than it consumes. That doesn’t mean it is unaffected by what happens in global energy markets, but it helps dampen the impact.”
Most importantly, “The U.S. economy is also heavily based on services and depends relatively little on the energy-intensive manufacturing industries that have been hit hardest by the spike in oil prices. And it went into the war with a stronger economy than many other countries, giving it more of a buffer against a slowdown.
“We’re not feeling the same pain the rest of the world is,” said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
Others are not so sanguine citing the cost of diesel fuel which as the Times also noted, in late March, is less discernible to the average consumer but whose price has climbed faster than the price of gasoline which could lead “to inflation across a wide range of goods” affecting the price and shipping of those products that most Americans rely on.
“Diesel “powers a lot of basic industries,” said Vidya Mani, a visiting associate professor at Cornell University’s business school whose research focuses on supply chains. “Mining industries, chemical factories, clothing factories — a lot of those things come from diesel.”
“Because of its far-reaching consequences, it can stop a lot of industries,” she said, adding that if prices continue to rise, consumers will probably begin to see the effects on everyday items and necessities within the next several weeks.”
“Much of the diesel in the United States comes from domestic supplies. But oil companies can still price the commodity at global market rates. In January, a little more than 40 percent of the cost of diesel came from the price of crude oil, according to the Energy Information Administration” making things even murkier for consumers as time goes by without an end to the conflict.
Spirit Airlines shut down last Saturday “after failing to strike a deal for a financial lifeline from the Trump administration, two people familiar with the matter said,” according to The New York Times.
For air travelers, looking for a no frills trip with low ticket costs, they had it but also faced charges for nearly everything to balance the fares, they succumbed to “high fuel prices, competition from larger airlines, the Covid-19 pandemic and an engine defect hobbled the company.
In recent weeks, “the airline had been negotiating a $500 million lifeline from the Trump administration. Some of the investors that Spirit owed money to oppose the terms of the bailout, under which the government could have ended up owning 90 percent of Spirit, because it would have left them in a worse financial position if the airline eventually failed.”
4,000 employees in Florida alone are now without jobs, with almost 1,000 employees laid off from Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston airports, plus more in Detroit, with rough estimates of a total of 17,000 ending an era, but also a model that was not working in post pandemic America.
“Spirit has been widely credited with democratizing air travel in the United States by keeping costs and ticket prices very low. The approach served Spirit well for years, generating huge profits. But competition from larger airlines and rising costs, particularly for pilots and other professionals, hobbled the company after the pandemic. It also suffered disproportionately from industry wide engine problems,” noted the Times.
Meanwhile that old bugaboo, inflation - is still a large concern as has been widely noted, and the Federal Reserve Bank has kept interest rates the same in light of the 3.8 inflation rate, much higher than its 2 percent target,
While Jerome Powell’s term as head, ends in a few days, the nominee by the president, Kevin Warsh is expected to have Senate approval, and is expected to cut interest rates, since while “the Fed cut rates last year, it did not deliver the kind of relief that Mr. Trump wanted. Since January, it has also turned cautious on subsequent reductions, a sentiment that has only grown amid the war in Iran, which has caused an acute energy shock,” said the Times.
It’s no secret that Trump wants stronger cuts and is determined to influence the Fed from the White House, threatening its traditional independence hinged by mandates on low inflation and job stability, which was threatened by the false charges of cost overruns attributed to Powell at the headquarters building.
Warsh has said if approved there is the chance that he would do so, besides his statement that he would not be the president’s “sock puppet”. Critics and Capitol Hill observers worry that should be stray from the president’s wishes this could be a repeat scenario “according to Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on Fed governance at the University of Pennsylvania, said Mr. Powell’s insistence on a clear, certain end to the investigation was about “not just about protecting himself but about protecting the Federal Reserve.”
“If this becomes a tried-and-true path to bully a central banker out of office, then we will see its invocation again,” said Mr. Conti-Brown, who added that the investigation had already proved damaging in other ways.”
