US job growth picked up in February and the unemployment rate edged up to 4.1 per cent, but growing uncertainty over trade policy and deep federal government spending cuts could erode the labour market’s resilience in the months ahead.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 151,000 jobs last month after rising by a downwardly revised 125,000 in January, the Labour Department’s Bureau of Labour Statistics said in its closely watched employment report on Friday.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls advancing by 160,000 jobs after a previously reported 143,000 gain in January. Estimates ranged from 30,000 to 300,000 positions.
The rise in the unemployment rate was from 4.0pc in January.
The report was the first under President Donald Trump’s watch. The Trump administration’s back-and-forth trade policy was making it hard for businesses to plan ahead, economists said. Business and consumer confidence have plunged since January, erasing all the gains notched in the aftermath of Trump’s election victory in November.
The stock market has sold off, with all three major indexes on Wall Street negative this year and the Nasdaq Composite in correction territory since peaking last December.
Trump triggered a trade war this week, slapping a new 25pc tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, along with a doubling of duties on Chinese goods to 20pc. But on Thursday, Trump exempted goods from both Canada and Mexico under a North American trade pact for a month from the 25pc duty.
Layoffs of probationary federal government workers by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, did not show up in the employment report as most of the purge happened outside the survey week.
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