(TNND) — The job market fell short of expectations in July as employers added just 73,000 positions to their payrolls, the Labor Department reported Friday.

May and June job figures were also revised down “larger than normal,” the Labor Department said.

All told, the employment picture hasn’t changed much since April, when President Donald Trump unveiled a slew of country-specific “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs.

Those tariffs were paused, but Trump maintained a 10% baseline tariff on most countries, with higher tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico and on some products. Trump has secured a handful of trade deals, including ones with the European Union and Japan.

And with the suspension of the higher “liberation day” tariffs ending this week, Trump signed an executive order that set new tariffs on more trading partners to go into effect a week from now.

“With the arrival of the president’s August deadline, the U.S. economy faces headwinds with tariffs at the top of the list,” Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said via email. “Still reeling from elevated prices resulting from inflation, most Americans believe taxes on imports are bad for their personal finances, as a Bankrate survey indicates. Now, economic data is affirming that view.”

Forecasters expected around 100,000 jobs to be added in July.

On top of missing the forecast, the job market wasn’t as healthy as initially reported in the previous two months.

The Labor Department said employers added just 19,000 jobs in May and 14,000 in June after previously reporting that 144,000 and 147,000 were added in those months, respectively.

Just 106,000 jobs have been added since April – a total lower than six individual months over the last year.

“Hiring has hit a wall in the U.S.,” Hamrick said. “Substantial downward revisions in payrolls means that private sector hiring has averaged a little more than 50,000 jobs over the past three months.”

The unemployment rate inched up in July but remained a low 4.2%.

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Labor economist Aaron Sojourner said the job market has been strong, noting the low level of layoffs coupled with wage growth, among other factors.

The average hourly earnings have increased 3.9% over the last year, the Labor Department reported. That compares to the current annual rate of inflation at 2.7%.

And he said it remains remarkably strong and stable despite signs of weakening.

“Labor market’s good for employed but tough for the small share who are unemployed,” he said Friday morning on Bluesky.

He said job growth is decelerating as policy uncertainty from Washington has reduced businesses’ willingness to invest.

It's a good time to have a job and a bad time to be looking for one.

“What’s going on beneath the surface?” Hamrick said. “While nearly half of workers say they’re likely to search for a new job over the next year, slowing hiring momentum suggests a sizeable share of those individuals may struggle to achieve their objective.”

The firing rate is just 1%, a report earlier this week showed. That’s near-record job security.

But the hiring rate, 3.3%, remained in a range that is the lowest in over a decade.

Sojourner said employers are “frozen by uncertainty like deer in headlights, unwilling to hire or fire because they don't know what's coming at them.”

Sojourner said the economy added 1.54 million jobs over the last 12 months. That’s weaker than any year to July since 2010, other than 2020, he said.

The number of long-term unemployed, those jobless for 27 weeks or more, increased by 179,000 to 1.8 million people.

Sojourner said the low hiring rate was the key culprit for the rise in long-term unemployed.