By Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, and other government agencies have scaled back their consumer protection work in recent months, but there are still steps people can take to keep their money safe.

In fact, consumer advocates say doing so is more important than ever.

“We as consumers are quite vulnerable right now,” says Christine Hines, senior policy director at the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

“We all need to be much more diligent about the products and services that we sign up for,” she adds.

Here are four ways to be your own advocate:

Enter new financial relationships with skepticism

Before taking out a new loan, insurance policy or any other kind of financial product, research the company, says Jeanine Skowronski, author of the “Money As If” newsletter.

Read reviews on Google, Trustpilot, Reddit, the Better Business Bureau and other sources that collect consumer feedback and complaints, she says. The CFPB complaint database is still available, too.

“You want to take everything in aggregate. Look at a lot of sources and identify themes,” Skowronski says. “Use many voices to help you decide.”

Even after you choose, keep track of how it’s going, she says. It might be worth shopping around again if you’re not happy after a few months.

Monitor accounts closely

Carefully check your financial accounts. If there is an error or extra fee tacked on, you can investigate right away, Hines says.

“I am monitoring my accounts more frequently,” she adds.

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Sometimes, an unexpected charge is the first sign of identity theft.

Bob Sullivan, an independent journalist and author of “The Red Tape Chronicles” on Substack, suggests signing up for text alerts from your financial institution with balance or deduction updates.

“I always have a good grasp of what the balance should be in all my accounts and get a text with the balance at least once a week,” Sullivan says.

Credit monitoring services can also help, especially if you get access to a free service after being involved in a data breach, he adds.

You can also consider a credit freeze to prevent new accounts from being opened in your name.

Speak up if you have concerns

“If there’s something wrong, call the company,” Hines says. Ask about why a fee was charged or why you were automatically opted into data sharing, for example.

“You can say, ‘There’s something wrong here and you can fix it right now before I make a public complaint,’” she suggests.

If you’re not sure what to say, you can follow a handy online script to talk through various concerns — like cutting cable and internet bills, trimming phone bills and saving on utilities — with a human customer service rep.

But maybe you can’t get a human. Sullivan says it can be frustrating to interact with a chatbot when you’re hoping to resolve a problem swiftly. That’s why he recommends walking into a bank branch or a store’s physical location with customer service representatives available if that’s an option.

“If you’re a good customer, a lot of these banks will waive a late fee once in a while. It’s always worth asking,” he says.

If your concerns are not addressed, Skowronski says it might be time to take your business elsewhere.

“You’re not stuck with a particular financial institution. Let your money talk,” she says.

File an official complaint if necessary

The CFPB might be scaled back, but it’s still accepting complaints on its website, and Hines recommends starting there.

“It helps build a record of what’s going on out there if consumers are having issues,” she says.

Hines also suggests contacting your state’s attorney general’s office, member of Congress or even a consumer attorney.

Going public can also be a useful option that helps other consumers, Skowronski says.

“Go write a review. People will use that to determine where they shop next.”

Kimberly Palmer writes for NerdWallet. Email: kpalmer@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @kimberlypalmer.

The article 4 Ways to Become Your Own Consumer Advocate originally appeared on NerdWallet.

By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added just 73,000 jobs last month and Labor Department revisions showed that hiring was much weaker than previously reported in May and June. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%.

The deterioration in the job market is taking place with companies paralyzed by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies.

The Labor Department reported Friday that revisions shaved a stunning 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls.

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The stock market tumbled on the news.

There are subtle signs that the labor market has been weakening for months, however.

New college graduates are struggling to break into the job market. The unemployment rate for college graduates 22 to 27 years old, reached 5.8% in March, the highest, excluding the pandemic, since 2012, and far above the nationwide unemployment rate.

Many Americans are staying in their jobs, unwilling to start the job hunt, because they believe this is as good as it gets, and there is growing evidence that they’re right: Few industries are actually hiring aggressively.

The current situation is a sharp reversal from the hiring boom of just three years ago when desperate employers were handing out signing bonuses and introducing perks such as Fridays off, fertility benefits and even pet insurance to recruit and keep workers.

Employers added an average 130,000 jobs a month through June, down 23% from last year’s hiring and a whopping 68% below the 2021-2023 average when the economy was bounding back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Weighing on the job market are the lingering effects of higher interest rates that were used by the Federal Reserve to fight inflation; President Donald Trump’s massive import taxes and the costs and uncertainty they are imposing on businesses; and an anticipated drop in foreign workers as the president’s massive deportation plans move forward.

“The labor market is poised for a summer slowdown as businesses put hiring plans on hold but refrain from broad-based layoffs,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon wrote in a commentary this week. “We see job growth slowing well below trend in the coming months.’’

Still, most American workers enjoy an unusual level of job security. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs — remains at healthy levels.

But Adam Schickling, senior economist at Vanguard, cautions that “a low unemployment rate and a muted pace of layoffs mask underlying weakness.’’

In a commentary Tuesday, Schickling wrote that the health of the job market “can be a matter of individual perspective…If you’re a registered nurse, you may believe the job market’s health to be excellent. The unemployment rate for experienced health care practitioners is currently below 2%. If you’re young and just entering the labor force or you’re older and seeking to reenter it, prospects may seem bleak.’’

The rate of people quitting their jobs — a sign they’re confident they can land something better — has fallen from the record heights of 2021 and 2022 and is now below where it stood before the pandemic.

For one thing, hiring has become concentrated in a handful of industries. So far this year, for example, private U.S. employers have added 644,000 jobs. Of those, nearly 405,000 — or 63% — were in just one of the Labor Department’s industry categories: healthcare and social assistance, which spans everything from hospitals to daycare centers.

As hiring has cooled over the past couple of years it’s become harder for young people or those re-entering the workforce to find jobs, leading to longer job searches or spells of unemployment. The Labor Department said the number of discouraged workers, who believe no jobs are available for them, rose by 256,000 in June to 637,000.

“Historically, a decline in hiring has been accompanied by a swift rise in layoffs, a one-two punch that drives up the unemployment rate,” Schickling wrote in a commentary. “Today’s labor market is defying that pattern.’’

One reason is that manufacturing companies, which tend to pull the trigger on layoffs quickly when economic conditions weaken, account for an ever-smaller share of American jobs. “So there is simply less headcount to cut,’’ he said.

The bottom line: “Firms are pulling back on hiring without shedding existing workers in significant numbers,’’ Schickling said. “The result is a labor market that is softening gradually, not collapsing.’’

By JANIE HAR and JAIMIE DING, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge ruled on Thursday against the Trump administration’s plans and extended Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 people from Central America and Asia, including people from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Temporary Protected Status is a protection that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary to people of various nationalities who are in the United States, preventing from being deported and allowing them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively been seeking to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It’s part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.

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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem can extend Temporary Protected Status to immigrants in the U.S. if conditions in their homelands are deemed unsafe to return due to a natural disaster, political instability or other dangerous conditions. Noem had ruled to end protections for tens of thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans after determining that conditions in their homelands no longer warranted them.

The secretary said the two countries had made “significant progress” in recovering from 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest Atlantic storms in history.

The designation for an estimated 7,000 from Nepal was scheduled to end Aug. 5 while protections allowing 51,000 Hondurans and nearly 3,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the U.S. for more than 25 years were set to expire Sept. 8.

U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in San Francisco did not set an expiration date but rather ruled to keep the protections in place while the case proceeds. The next hearing is Nov. 18.

In a sharply written order, Thompson said the administration ended the migrant status protections without an “objective review of the country conditions” such as political violence in Honduras and the impact of recent hurricanes and storms in Nicaragua.

If the protections were not extended, immigrants could suffer from loss of employment, health insurance, be separated from their families, and risk being deported to other countries where they have no ties, she wrote, adding that the termination of Temporary Protection Status for people from Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua would result in a $1.4 billion loss to the economy.

“The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood,” Thompson said.

Lawyers for the National TPS Alliance argued that Noem’s decisions were predetermined by President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and motivated by racial animus.

Thompson agreed, saying that statements Noem and Trump have made perpetuated the “discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population.”

“Color is neither a poison nor a crime,” she wrote.

The advocacy group that filed the lawsuit said designees usually have a year to leave the country, but in this case, they got far less.

“They gave them two months to leave the country. It’s awful,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for plaintiffs at a hearing Tuesday.

Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Antonio García told The Associated Press, “The judge recognized the need of the (TPS holders) to be able to work in peace, tranquility and legally.”

He recalled that during the first Trump administration, there was a similar legal challenge and the fight took five years in the courts. He hoped for a similar outcome this time that would allow the Hondurans to remain in the U.S.

“Today’s news is hopeful and positive and gives us time and oxygen, hopefully it will be a long road, and the judge will have the final word and not President Trump,” he said.

Meanwhile in Nicaragua, hundreds of thousands have fled into exile as the government shuttered thousands of nongovernmental organizations and imprisoned political opponents. Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have consolidated complete control in Nicaragua since Ortega returned to power two decades ago.

In February, a panel of U.N. experts warned the Nicaraguan government had dismantled the last remaining checks and balances and was “systematically executing a strategy to cement total control of the country through severe human rights violations.”

The broad effort by the Republican administration ’s crackdown on immigration has been going after people who are in the country illegally but also by removing protections that have allowed people to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis.

The Trump administration has already terminated protections for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians and thousands of people from Afghanistan and Cameroon. Some have pending lawsuits at federal courts.

The government argued that Noem has clear authority over the program and that her decisions reflect the administration’s objectives in the areas of immigration and foreign policy.

“It is not meant to be permanent,” Justice Department attorney William Weiland said.

Ding reported from Los Angeles. Marlon González contributed from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

By JOSH FUNK, Associated Press Transportation Writer

The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday enters its third and final day of public testimony over the fatal midair crash between an Army helicopter and commercial jet in January.

Two previous days of testimony underscored a number of factors that likely contributed to the collision that left all 67 people aboard both aircrafts dead, sparking Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to “do better” as she pointed to warnings the agency ignored years earlier.

Some of the major issues that have emerged so far include the Black Hawk helicopter flying above prescribed levels near Ronald Reagan National Airport as well as the warnings to FAA officials for years about the hazards related to the heavy chopper traffic there.

It’s too early for the board to identify what exactly caused the crash. A final report from the board won’t come until next year.

But it became clear this week how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.

The January collision was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the traveling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation.

Worry over military helicopters

The board focused on air traffic control and heard Thursday that it was common for pilots to ask to use visual separation or relying on their eyesight just as the Army Black Hawk’s pilots, who were wearing night vision goggles, agreed to do the night of the crash.

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FAA officials also said controllers relied heavily on pilots using visual separation as a way to manage the complex airspace with so many helicopters flying around Washington D.C.

But Rick Dressler, an official with medevac operator Metro Aviation, told the board it is difficult to identify other aircraft in the night sky around Ronald Reagan National Airport, especially if a key onboard locator system was switched off, as Army choppers routinely did.

Dressler said that he and other civilian helicopter pilots in the area have long been concerned about the Army and Air Force helicopters flying around Reagan airport.

“I don’t like saying this. I’ll say it again on the record,” Dressler, a former Army aviator and retired Air Force officer, said. “I’m speaking for my group there. We we are all very uncomfortable when those two units are operating.”

The Department of Defense referred questions about Thursday’s testimony to the Army, which did not immediately respond. Army officials at the hearing did ask Dressler to elaborate on his concerns and consider visiting the Pentagon to share them.

Dressel said part of what worries him is the relative lack of experience of the military pilots who may have only been in the area a short time and don’t understand the complex airspace around Washington D.C.

“They don’t get the seasoning here to really, truly understand how the airspace works,” said Dressel, who also complained that the Army helicopter unit no longer participates in regular meetings with all the other aviators in the area to discuss issues.

The Air Force also did not immediately respond to questions about Dressler’s remarks.

The American Airlines jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.

Final moments

Testimony covered much ground, including the final audio communications from pilots aboard the Army chopper.

The Black Hawk’s crew had been communicating with the airport’s control tower, although the helicopter pilots did not fully hear the controller’s instructions.

The Black Hawk pilots told the tower twice in the minutes before the crash that they had the American Airlines passenger plane in sight and would maintain proper separation. But when the controller instructed the pilots to “pass behind” the jet, the crew didn’t hear that instruction because the Black Hawk’s microphone key was pressed at that moment.

Just before the collision an instructor pilot aboard the helicopter asked the pilot at the controls to come left. But it wasn’t clear if the pilot had time to maneuver the helicopter before the crash.

“Kinda come left for me ma’am,” the instructor said.

The pilot responded: “Sure.”

Concern about distances between planes and helicopters

John Cox, an aviation safety expert and retired airline pilot, said the hearings are headed in the right direction to determine what happened and to prevent similar accidents.

His main concerns focus on the Black Hawk helicopter, including why it was above the 200-feet (61 meters) elevation limit for that particular helicopter route. Another question is why the Black Hawk wasn’t closer to the east bank of the Potomac River, where it would have been further away from landing airplanes.

“I’ve passed helicopters underneath me over the east bank of the Potomac a lot of times,” said Cox, who flew commercial airliners for 25 years. “And there’s always been plenty of separation. It’s not a lot because the space is so constrained. But you’re dealing with professional pilots and it’s not been a problem.”

Investigators said Wednesday the flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots relied upon showed they were flying.

Associated Press writers David Klepper, Mike Catalini, Leah Askarinam, Ben Finley and Rio Yamat contributed to this story.