Hiring held firm in the US last month, official data showed, amid uncertainty over the strength and direction of the world’s largest economy.

Employers added 50,000 jobs to the US labor force last month, capping the weakest year of growth since the pandemic, according to data released from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.

The closely watched reading was slightly shy of the approximately 73,000 jobs economists expected to be added in the US economy in December.

Previous readings for October and November were also revised lower, with the BLS now estimating that the US added 76,000 fewer jobs during those two months. In October, during the longest US government shutdown in history, the US economy shed 173,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate, which rose to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, fell back to 4.4% in December.

Donald Trump was re-elected after promising to rebuilding the US economy, which he claimed had been destroyed under predecessor Joe Biden. He also pledged to bring down prices rapidly for millions of Americans.

The US president claims the economy has since taken off on his watch – and growth surged in the third quarter of last year. But the labor market, which economists watch closely to determine the strength of the broader economy, has slowed dramatically.

US employers added 584,000 over the course of 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, according to official data. In 2024, the last year of Biden’s presidency, they added 2 million.

The White House is meanwhile facing questions after Trump posted a chart on his Truth Social platform on Thursday evening – ahead of the following morning’s official data release – which appeared to use data from Friday’s jobs report to show growth in private sector jobs.

Bloomberg News was first to report the apparent embargo breach.

While the president is typically briefed on the jobs data the day before its release, publicly commenting on economic data before it is officially published is an unusual breach in protocol.

In a statement to the Guardian, the White House confirmed that “there was an inadvertent public disclosure of aggregate data that was partially derived from pre-released information” and that it is “accordingly reviewing protocols regarding economic data releases”.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said: “Job growth in 2025 was the weakest in over a decade, outside of the pandemic. Instead of lowering costs like he promised, the second year of the Trump presidency is kicking off with a weaker job market and higher prices.”

Economists describe the labor market as being in a “no hire, no fire” phase, in which job growth continues but remains subdued. Data from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that layoffs in December were nearly half the level of those recorded in November.

After the government shutdown halted economic data collection in October and the beginning of November, December was the first month that the statistics bureau could fully collect jobs data.

Federal Reserve officials are expected to weigh this data at their next policy meeting at the end of January, when they will decide whether to lower interest rates, which sit at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, or keep them on hold.

Officials have signaled that a pause in cuts is likely. Minutes from the board’s December meeting revealed stark division when members made their third consecutive cut to rates last month. “Some participants suggested that, under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep [rates] unchanged for some time,” the notes said.

Samuel Tombs, the chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said on Friday: “December’s labor market report is weak enough to keep the possibility of a March easing of Fed policy firmly in the mix. The sluggish headline payroll print was underpinned by a mere 37,000 increase in private payrolls.”

In a press conference last month, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said officials would proceed with caution as they remain hopeful that the labor market will stabilize in the upcoming year and inflation will start to cool. Prices rose 2.7% in November, a cooling-off after rising 3% in September.

But the Fed’s vigilance over the economy continues to clash with the outlook of Trump and his economic advisers, who have demanded lower interest rates. Cutting rates could stimulate economic growth, including bolstering the labor market, but at the risk of making prices rise faster.

In a speech on Thursday, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, urged the Fed to continue cutting rates this year. “It’s the only ingredient missing for even stronger economic growth, which is why the Fed should not delay,” he said.