America’s employers added 115,000 jobs in April despite an economic shock from the Iran war that has disrupted global oil supplies and pushed gasoline prices above $4.50 a gallon, according to a Labor Department employment report released Friday. The report also showed the unemployment rate holding at 4.3%, keeping the labor market in a relatively low-unemployment posture even as energy costs rose.
The headline job gain came in above economists’ expectations, with forecasts calling for 65,000 jobs. It also reflected a slowdown from March, when employers added 185,000 jobs, according to the report. In the broader picture, economists said the conflict had not yet broken the labor market, though they warned the longer it lasts, the greater the risk to economic activity.
Olu Sonola, an economist at Fitch Ratings, said, “The labor market is not booming, but it is proving harder to break than` many feared.’” Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, said businesses were treating the Iran conflict as temporary, adding that “We’re seeing strong business investment, particularly around tech and AI. The economy continues to expand. We’ve weathered some shocks. The worst of the tariff impact is likely over.” Faucher also cautioned, “the longer conflict in Iran lasts, the higher energy prices go, the longer they stay elevated the greater the drag on the economy.”
Job gains in April were led by healthcare, which added 37,000 jobs, and by transportation and warehousing companies, which added 30,000, the Labor Department reported. At the same time, manufacturers cut 2,000 jobs during the month and have shed 66,000 jobs over the past year, a decline tied in the reporting to protectionist policies that Trump imposed with the goal of building factory jobs.
The report’s household survey also showed the labor force participation rate dropped to 61.8%, the lowest since October 2021. The employment gains occurred as hourly earnings rose 0.2% from March and 3.6% from April 2025, consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target, the report said. The job report included revisions that shaved 16,000 jobs from February and March payrolls.
The energy shock grew sharper after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks Feb. 28 and Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas pass, the report said. That disruption has contributed to downgrades in expectations for global and U.S. economic growth, even as the jobs report suggested hiring so far has continued.
While the overall payroll picture remained resilient, some individual employers described pressures from higher fuel costs and consumer spending. Michael Cramer, co-founder and CEO of online retailer Adagio Teas, said his company expects to freeze hiring this year, noting it “typically adds anywhere from five to six workers per year” to pack orders at a warehouse in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Cramer said Adagio had seen a slight sales drop after gasoline prices rose and shoppers—particularly those in lower-income brackets—faced tighter budgets. “You only hire when you have more orders that you can fill,” Cramer said, adding, “I don’t envision us being in that position for the remainder of the year. I think the remainder of this year is going to be fairly bumpy.”
The report also pointed to support for demand from big tax refund checks arriving this spring, linked to Trump’s tax cut legislation last year, giving consumers more room to spend and creating incentives for companies to add workers as sales rise. It noted that the job market had shown intermittent recovery after 2025’s weaker period, when employers created just 9,700 jobs a month—fewest outside a recession year since 2002—amid high interest rates and uncertainty over Trump’s economic policies.
Across industries, healthcare had driven a large share of year-over-year growth, with companies adding 456,000 jobs over the past year, while other employers combined to cut 205,000 over the same 12-month span ended in April, according to the report. The reporting also highlighted hiring gains beyond healthcare, including 22,000 jobs added by retailers and 9,000 by construction companies, and it cited Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, who wrote, “America’s hiring recession appears to be over,” adding that the average job gains in 2025 were “an anemic 10,000 a month” and that in 2026 the average so far is 76,000.
Even as hiring expanded, workers described uneven job search conditions. Angela Paniccia, 33, of Queens in New York City, said she had been laid off by an educational travel company in December and that she often struggled to get responses or feedback when applying for new roles. “You’ll never hear back or you’ll get just a generic ‘We’re moving on with someone else’ without feedback,’’ she said, adding that she has been working part-time for a caterer to help with rent and describing the loss of daily routine.
Labor market momentum comes as the Federal Reserve weighs whether to adjust interest rates, with the report likely reinforcing a cautious stance. The report said inflation jumped to 3.3% in March, a two-year high above the Fed’s target, and it noted that gas prices climbed quickly after the Strait of Hormuz disruption. PNC’s Faucher said the report “actually makes it less likely that we see a rate cut anytime soon because the Fed can say, ‘The job market is solid. Let’s get inflation back down to 2%. This is not the time to cut rates.’”
The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report combines two main parts: a household survey of 60,000 households to calculate unemployment and labor force participation and an establishment survey covering about 119,000 businesses and government agencies and representing 622,000 worksites to estimate job counts, hours worked and hourly wages. The establishment survey can undergo revisions, sometimes large ones, as employers submit responses late or correct earlier filings, and the report also said the government has been contending with a drop in the share of employers that respond since the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, most economists, businesses and investors view the monthly report as a reliable indicator of the labor market’s direction.
AP Retail Writer Anne D’Innocenzio in New York and AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this story.