By Nick Moyle | NJ.com
nj.com
(TNS)
March 19 — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday said there is “concern” among committee members over troubling trends in the U.S. job market.
While the unemployment rate remains low at 4.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a loss of 92,000 jobs in February, while December and January’s job gains were revised down by 69,000.
During a news conference Wednesday, Powell said members of the Federal Open Market Committee were troubled by those findings.
“The thing that I think a good number of people on the committee are concerned about is just the very, very low level of job creation,” Powell said Wednesday.
“If you adjust what has been the trend in job creation over the past, let’s say, six months, for what we think is the overstatement due to overcounting, effectively there’s zero net job creation in the private sector,” he added.
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Powell flagged tighter immigration policy under the Trump administration as a key driver of labor force contraction, resulting in a cooling job market.
He said the job numbers look like “what the economy needs in terms of dealing with the non-existent growth in the labor force,” but warned that this sort of situation is unprecedented.
“So you’ve got a sort of zero employment growth equilibrium,” he said. “Now that’s that’s balance, okay. But I would say it does have a feel of downside risk and it’s not kind of a really comfortable balance.”
Following the latest jobs report, Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, told Fox Business that, “After lackluster job gains in 2025, the labor market is coming to a standstill.”
“The three-month average is 6,000 and the six-month average is negative for the fourth time in five months,” he said. “Looking ahead, we should expect the unemployment rate to rise.”
Democrats seized on the latest jobs report as evidence the economy was sliding toward recession, blaming Trump’s focus on foreign policy over domestic concerns and his tariff agenda.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a statement calling the report a “blaring alarm” amid Trump’s “reckless, cost-spiking” war on Iran.
Trump has defended his economic policies amid the Middle East conflict, which has caused oil and gas prices to skyrocket.
On Thursday, the president said he thought the impact of the war “would be worse” on the economy.
“It’s going to be over with pretty soon,” Trump said.
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