Fresh hiring data on Friday is set to offer the first look at the performance of a key economic gauge in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement early last month.
The jobs report, set to detail hiring in April, may offer clues about the private sector response to the tariff escalation on April 2, which triggered the biggest single-day stock market drop since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Days later, Trump suspended a major swathe of the tariffs, sending the market to one of its largest ever single-day increases. A simultaneous escalation of tariffs on Chinese goods kept the effective tariff rate at its highest level in more than a century, the Yale Budget Lab found.
Economists expect the U.S to have added 133,000 jobs in April. That figure would mark solid job growth, but it would amount to a sharp slowdown from 228,000 jobs added in the prior month.
The jobs data arrives days after a government report showed the U.S. economy shrank over the first three months of 2025, much of which took place as Trump’s flurry of tariff proposals stoked uncertainty among businesses and consumers.
U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, declined at a 0.3% annualized rate over three months ending in March, according to government data released on Wednesday. The figure marked a sharp dropoff from 2.4% annualized growth over the final three months of 2024.
President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, April 30, 2025, in Washington.
Evan Vucci/AP
Despite flagging consumer sentiment and market turmoil, the labor market has provided a bright spot since Trump took office. The U.S. has added a robust average of 170,000 jobs each month this year, while the unemployment rate has remained at a historically low level.
Meanwhile, inflation cooled in March, putting price increases well below a peak attained in 2022, data showed.
Still, recession fears are mounting on Wall Street as Trump’s tariffs threaten to upend global trade. Goldman Sachs earlier this month hiked its odds of a recession from 35% to 45%. JPMorgan pegged the probability of a recession this year at 60%.
Speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago earlier this month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the “solid condition” of the U.S. economy, but he cautioned about signals of a potential slowdown.
“Life moves pretty fast,” Powell said.
For its part, the Trump administration has largely refused to rule out the possibility of a recession. Trump has vowed to strike new agreements with many U.S. trade partners, predicting the U.S economy may suffer short-term pain but will ultimately flourish under a more favorable set of international rules.
“We have been ripped off by every country in the world practically. And friend and foe,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last month. “We’re not doing that anymore.”
