Sluggish Hiring Follows Donald Trump Tariffs and AI Shift

Employers added 50,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate slipped to 4.4 percent, following revised November figures and a year of sluggish hiring amid business caution over Donald Trump’s tariff moves and the rise of AI.Private measures and reporting had signaled weakness earlier, with CBS News/CBS MoneyWatch and ADP showing softer private hiring and Challenger reporting more than 35,500 announced cuts in December as major firms including Amazon pared workforces.The Federal Reserve cut its key short‑term rate three times late last year and Jerome Powell said the central bank may hold rates steady while benchmark revisions and a preliminary estimate that could remove about 911,000 jobs complicate the outlook.