By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — On Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the latest snapshot on the health of the US labor market – and economists’ estimates vary wildly over what we should expect for the final jobs report of 2025.

The consensus estimates are for 55,000 jobs to have been added in December, underscoring how last year’s employment growth was the weakest in decades.

But some economists say seasonal factors such as the holiday hiring peak could put December’s monthly total somewhere north of 105,000.

The unemployment rate is expected to tick down to 4.5% after hitting a four-year high of 4.6% in November, FactSet consensus estimates show.

No matter what the numbers show, Americans are feeling increasingly hopeless about their employment prospects.

“Total job gains for 2025 are on track to be a meager 710,000,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a statement. “That’s the worst hiring outside of a recession since 2003. Even 2010, on the heels of the Great Recession, was a better year for hiring than 2025.”

The perceived probability of finding a job hit a record low of 43.1% in December, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, a closely watched survey that has been running since 2013.

Additionally, the December survey showed that respondents’ expectations of losing their job rose to the highest mean probability since April 2025.

Lopsided job gains

For much of the past 12 months, extremely high uncertainty (from sweeping policies such as those related to tariffs); dramatic shifts in the nation’s immigration flows; and, to a much lesser extent, companies testing the AI waters, have resulted in muted employment gains – or even outright losses – across most industries.

The lone exceptions have been health care – an industry growing as a result of an aging population – and leisure and hospitality, which has reaped some of the spoils from an increasingly bifurcated economy.

“Health services is an expensive type of service for most consumers; leisure and hospitality [spending] is a discretionary service for all consumers,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at payroll company ADP. “These two sectors are consistent with a K-shaped economy where higher-income consumers are driving spending.”

Those two sectors, which make up about 22% of all employment, accounted for 84% of the total job gains seen from January through November 2025. And for the remaining 78%, it’s been a far different story.

The labor market became even more lopsided after April 2025, when President Donald Trump made his biggest and broadest tariff announcement. Sentiment plummeted and uncertainty skyrocketed, stifling hiring plans in the process. From April through November 2025, job gains in health care and leisure and hospitality outpaced the net jobs added across the entire labor market during those eight months.

Pretty much every other industry is in the throes of a “hiring recession,” Navy Federal Credit Union’s Long said.

Data released earlier this week further confirmed the listless state of the broader labor market.

The BLS’ latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey data released Wednesday showed that US businesses sought out fewer workers in November and hiring activity slumped to match its lowest rate in more than a decade (excluding the data- and economy-distorting pandemic).

At the same time, layoff activity remained low in November, along with the rate of people quitting

CNN

By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — On Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the latest snapshot on the health of the US labor market – and economists’ estimates vary wildly over what we should expect for the final jobs report of 2025.

The consensus estimates are for 55,000 jobs to have been added in December, underscoring how last year’s employment growth was the weakest in decades, outside of a recession.

But some economists say seasonal factors such as the holiday hiring peak could put December’s monthly total somewhere north of 105,000.

The unemployment rate is expected to tick down to 4.5% after hitting a four-year high of 4.6% in November, FactSet consensus estimates show.

No matter what the numbers show, Americans are feeling increasingly hopeless about their employment prospects.

“Total job gains for 2025 are on track to be a meager 710,000,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a statement. “That’s the worst hiring outside of a recession since 2003. Even 2010, on the heels of the Great Recession, was a better year for hiring than 2025.”

The perceived probability of finding a job hit a record low of 43.1% in December, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Survey of Consumer Expectations, a closely watched survey that has been running since 2013.

Additionally, the December survey showed that respondents’ expectations of losing their job rose to the highest mean probability since April 2025.

Lopsided job gains

For much of the past 12 months, extremely high uncertainty (from sweeping policies such as those related to tariffs); dramatic shifts in the nation’s immigration flows; and, to a much lesser extent, companies testing the AI waters, have resulted in muted employment gains – or even outright losses – across most industries.

The lone exceptions have been health care – an industry growing as a result of an aging population – and leisure and hospitality, which has reaped some of the spoils from an increasingly bifurcated economy.

“Health services is an expensive type of service for most consumers; leisure and hospitality [spending] is a discretionary service for all consumers,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at payroll company ADP. “These two sectors are consistent with a K-shaped economy where higher-income consumers are driving spending.”

Those two sectors, which make up about 22% of all employment, accounted for 84% of the total job gains seen from January through November 2025. And for the remaining 78%, it’s been a far different story.

The labor market became even more lopsided after April 2025, when President Donald Trump made his biggest and broadest tariff announcement. Sentiment plummeted and uncertainty skyrocketed, stifling hiring plans in the process. From Apri

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — Mutual distrust between federal and state authorities derailed plans for a joint FBI and state criminal investigation into Wednesday’s shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer, leading to the highly unusual move by the Justice Department to block state investigators from participating in the probe.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Thursday that after an initial agreement for the FBI to work with the state agency, as well as prosecutors from the US Attorney’s office in Minneapolis and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, to investigate the shooting, federal authorities reversed course and the FBI blocked the BCA from participating in the investigation.

Behind the move to sever ties were concerns in the Trump administration that state officials couldn’t be trusted with information that emerges from the probe, and that ICE agents’ safety would be put at risk, including with potential doxxing of agents involved, two people familiar with the matter told CNN.

The mistrust goes both ways, as state officials attacked the conduct of ICE agents and raised concerns that federal authorities can’t be trusted to fairly investigate given public statements from President Donald Trump and other administration officials accusing the woman killed of being a domestic terrorist.

Minnesota officials have lambasted ICE as “reckless,” calling comments defending the officers who fired the shot as “bullsh*t,” and calling the deployment of ICE in Minnesota a threat to the “endurance of our republic.” Comments like these, the sources said, have fueled the distrust.

A history of state and federal cooperation

The unilateral decision cut off state law enforcement from access to evidence that may show whether the ICE officer responsible for the fatal shooting could, or should, be criminally charged.

In the past, federal and local law enforcement have worked together to meticulously gather evidence, conduct interviews and share information in cases of officer-involved killings. Like in the investigation into the killing of Minneapolis’ George Floyd, local law enforcement was focused on bringing state murder charges, while the federal investigation focused on whether civil rights laws were violated.

Minnesota Department of Public Safety commissioner Bob Jacobson said during a press conference Thursday that state investigators work with the FBI “all the time” as the bureau has “the evidence in the original investigative notes and reports.”

“We have none of that,” he said. “They have shared none of that with us.”

Jacobson added that bringing a case against the officer would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible, without cooperation from the federal government.”

The FBI declined to comment for this story and hasn’t said what the parameters of its investigation are. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Read more

* WHAT…Dangerous rip currents and breaking waves due to
elevated surf expected.

* WHERE…Catalina and Santa Barbara Islands, Ventura County
Beaches, Malibu Coast and Los Angeles County Beaches.

* WHEN…Through this evening.

* IMPACTS…There is an increased risk of ocean drowning. Rip
currents can pull swimmers and surfers out to sea. Waves can
wash people off beaches and rocks, and capsize small boats
nearshore.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS…Surf heights of 3 to 6 feet with local
sets to 7 feet are expected.
Remain out of the water due to hazardous swimming conditions, or
stay near occupied lifeguard towers. Rock jetties can be deadly
in such conditions, stay off the rocks.

The post Beach Hazards Statement issued January 9 at 1:44AM PST until January 9 at 9:00PM PST by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

Análisis por Stephen Collinson, CNN

A Donald Trump le llevó cinco años sentarse en el Resolute Desk para alcanzar una epifanía que podría sacudir el mundo.

El presidente de EE.UU. más atrevido de la era moderna podría a veces enfrentarse a obstáculos legales o constitucionales en su país. Pero se está dando cuenta de que hay todo un mundo allá afuera en el que puede perseguir su búsqueda del poder infinito.

Mientras la arrogancia crece en la Casa Blanca, Trump declaró al New York Times en una entrevista publicada este jueves que solo había “una cosa” para limitar su poder global. “Mi propia moralidad. Mi propia mente. Es lo único que puede detenerme”. Y añadió: “No necesito el derecho internacional”.

El comentario de Trump alarmará a los extranjeros que palidecen ante su imagen. También podría desencadenar tres años de agitación internacional.

Su raro momento de introspección se produjo tras una semana frenética que puede entenderse mejor como una demostración de su aplicación de un poder brutal y sin complejos.

Sucesos impactantes pusieron de relieve cómo la política estadounidense, tanto en el país como en el extranjero, es ahora la personificación del complejo carácter del presidente. Es volátil, despiadada y performativa y, en ocasiones, desafía las limitaciones constitucionales y legales.

Trump ha desdeñado durante mucho tiempo el derecho internacional, los tratados, las instituciones multilaterales, el libre comercio y las alianzas que presidentes anteriores consideraban multiplicadores de la influencia estadounidense.

Más que nunca en sus cinco años en la Casa Blanca, actúa con base en esa convicción.

La audaz incursión de las fuerzas especiales que sacó de su lecho al derrocado presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, violó la soberanía de otra nación y el derecho internacional.

La operación probablemente excedió la prerrogativa constitucional de un presidente en el uso de la fuerza militar. Pero la moral del mandatario no se vio afectada, así que siguió adelante.

El envío de varios cientos de tropas, múltiples aviones y ataques contra objetivos venezolanos llegó hasta el límite de lo que el presidente está autorizado a hacer, según la Constitución (y muchos críticos creen que lo superó).

Pero la apuesta de Trump por Venezuela es más audaz que eso.

El presidente declaró que supervisará personalmente las exportaciones petroleras de Venezuela, en un resurgimiento de la política colonialista a la que Estados Unidos se ha opuesto durante mucho tiempo.

Trump vuelve a tener en la mira a Groenlandia, cuyo ya elevado valor estratégico se está volviendo aún más crítico debido a sus depósitos de minerales de tierras raras y a que el derretimiento del hielo polar abre una nueva competencia geopolítica.

A Trump parece no importarle que sea un territorio semiautónomo de Dinamarca, aliado de la OTAN, y que su gente no haya expresado ningún deseo de ser estadounidense.

“La propiedad es importante”, declaró el presidente al Times.

La Casa Blanca había declarado previamente que Groenlandia era importante para Trump por razones de seguridad nacional. Pero su singular moral le permite adoptar una motivación más personal. Aseguró que la