NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are ticking higher Friday following a mixed report on the U.S. job market, one that may delay another cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve but not necessarily slam the door on it.

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The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in early trading and was nearing its all-time high set earlier in the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 147 points, or 0.3%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was virtually unchanged.

Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market after the U.S. Labor Department said employers hired fewer workers in total during December than economists expected, though the unemployment rate improved and was better than expected. It reinforced the belief that the U.S. job market may be in a “ low-hire, low-fire” state.

While the overall data was mixed, the improvement in the unemployment rate was enough to get traders to ratchet back their expectations for a cut to interest rates at the Fed’s next meeting at the end of this month. Traders are now forecasting just a 5% chance of that, down from 11% a day before, according to data from CME Group.

But they’re still forecasting a high likelihood that the Fed will cut at least twice this upcoming year. Whether they’re correct carries high stakes for financial markets. Lower interest rates can goose the economy and push up prices for investments, though they also can worsen inflation at the same time.

“Until the data provide a clearer direction, a divided Fed is likely to stay that way,” according to Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “Lower rates are likely coming this year, but the markets may have to be patient.”

After the report, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.19%, where it was late Thursday. It tends to track expectations for longer-term economic growth and inflation. But the two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks forecasts for what the Fed will do with short-term interest rates in the near term, ticked up to 3.50% from 3.49%.

On Wall Street, power company Vistra soared 14.6% to help lead the market after signing a 20-year deal to provide electricity to Meta Platforms from three of its nuclear plants. Big Tech companies have been signing a string of such deals to electrify the data centers powering their moves into artificial-intelligence technology.

Oklo jumped 12% after saying it also signed a deal with Meta Platforms that will help it secure nuclear fuel and advance its project to build a facility in Pike County, Ohio.

They helped offset a 1.6% drop for General Motors. The auto giant said it will take a $6 billion hit to its results for the last three months of 2025 related to its pullback from electric vehicles. That’s on top of the $1.6 billion in charges GM took in the prior quarter. Fewer tax incentives and easier fuel-emission regulations have been eating into demand for EVs.

WD-40 tumbled 13.7% after reporting a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief Financial Officer Sara Hyzer said the soft numbers were primarily because of timing issues, not weaker demand from end customers, and the company stood by its financial forecasts for the upcoming year.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

The French CAC 40 rose 1%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.6% for two of the world’s bigger gains. In Tokyo, Fast Retailing, the fashion company behind Uniqlo, jumped 10.6% after its quarterly operating profit surged about 34% year-on-year. It revised its full-year forecasts upward.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sluggish hiring last month closed out a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even as layoffs and unemployment have also been low.

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Employers added just 50,000 jobs in December, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower.

The data suggests that businesses are reluctant to add workers even as economic growth has picked up. Many firms hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial intelligence, which could alter or even replace some jobs.

Nearly all the jobs added in December were in the health care and restaurant and hotel industries. Manufacturing, construction and retail companies all shed jobs.

The jobs data are being closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they are the first clean readings on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.

Still, December’s report caps a year of sluggish hiring, particularly after “liberation day” in April when President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, though many were later delayed or softened. The economy generated an average of 111,000 jobs a month in the first three months of 2025. But that pace dropped to just 11,000 in the three months ended in August, before rebounding slightly to 22,000 in November.

Subdued hiring underscores a key conundrum surrounding the economy as it enters 2026: Growth has picked up to healthy levels, yet hiring has weakened noticeably and the unemployment rate has increased in the last four jobs reports.

Last year, the economy gained just 584,000 jobs, sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024. It’s the smallest annual gain since the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the job market in 2020.

Most economists expect hiring will accelerate this year as growth remains solid, and President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation is expected to produce large tax refunds this spring. Yet they acknowledge there are other possibilities: Weak job gains could drag down future growth. Or the economy could keep expanding at a healthy clip, while automation and the spread of artificial intelligence reduces the need for more jobs.

Even the weak 2025 figures are likely to be revised lower in February, when the government completes an annual benchmarking of the jobs figures to an actual count of jobs derived from companies’ unemployment insurance filings. A preliminary estimate of that revision showed it could reduce total jobs as of March 2025 by 911,000.

And last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the government could still be overstating job gains by about 60,000 a month because of shortcomings in how it accounts for new companies as well as those that have gone out of business. The Labor Department is expected to update those methods in its report next month.

With hiring so weak, the Federal Reserve cut its key short-term interest rate three times late last year, in an effort to boost borrowing, spending, and hiring. Yet Powell signaled that the central bank may keep its rate unchanged in the coming months as it evaluates how the economy evolves.

Even with such sluggish job gains, the economy has continued to expand, with growth reaching a 4.3% annual rate in last year’s July-September quarter, the best in two years. Strong consumer spending helped drive the gain. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta forecasts that growth could slow to a still-solid 2.7% in the final three months of last year.

At the same time, inflation remains elevated, eroding the value of Americans’ paychecks. Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November compared with a year ago, little changed from the beginning of the year and above the Fed’s 2% target.

DULUTH, Minn. — A Duluth police officer who had been placed on paid leave following two alleged incidents of sexual assault has left the force.

The Duluth Police Department had previously attempted to terminate the employment of officer Tyler Leibfried following an unrelated incident in which he shot an unarmed man through the closed door of an apartment building in September 2020. But Leibfried was found not guilty of two criminal charges subsequently brought against him and wound up being reinstated as an officer in 2023.

On Dec. 10, 2025, Duluth police confirmed Leibfried was under investigation anew, this time for allegations of sexual assault leveled by two separate women — one involving a November 2024 incident and another reported in 2021.

When contacted by the Duluth News Tribune last week with a request for an update on Leibfried’s employment status, DPD public information officer Mattie Hjelseth responded: “Effective Dec. 23, Officer Leibfried is no longer employed by the Duluth Police Department. No further information is available per MN State Statute 13.43.”

She declined to elaborate or to characterize the nature of Leibfried’s departure as the result of either a resignation, negotiated settlement or termination.

Andrew Park, president of Duluth Police LELS Local 538 — which represents rank-and-file officers at the Duluth Police Department — confirmed that “Tyler Leibfried is no longer employed by the city of Duluth. The police union has no further comment on the matter.”

The St. Louis County Attorney’s Office looked into the sexual assault allegations against Leibfried and declined to file criminal charges against him, but Leibfried still could have faced disciplinary measures for any actions deemed to violate city and police department policies/standards.

In a previous statement, Police Chief Mike Ceynowa said: “We take allegations against our officers very seriously and investigate each complaint thoroughly.”

Leibfried, 33, joined the DPD in 2016 and at least 20 complaints have been filed against him during his tenure, according to records previously released to the News Tribune.

He became the first-known law enforcement officer in the area to stand trial for an on-duty shooting but was acquitted in April 2022 on two felony charges related to the injury of then-23-year-old Jared Fyle at the Kingsley Heights apartment building in downtown Duluth.

Leibfried was responding to a report of a domestic disturbance in the building and was startled by a loud bang that emanated from the closed door of an apartment. Leibfried testified that he “100%” believed the sound was a gunshot and feared for his own safety, as well as that of his police partner at the time. He fired at the door repeatedly, striking Fyle in the shoulder.

Last year, Fyle received a $600,000 legal settlement from the city to resolve an outstanding federal lawsuit related to the case.

Even though Leibfried was cleared of criminal charges, Duluth police leadership sought to terminate his employment on the grounds that he had violated department use-of-force policies by shooting through a closed door. The Duluth Police Union successfully grieved the decision, returning Leibried to his job.

Both allegations of sexual assault stem from accusations of Leibfried trying to take advantage of women while intoxicated.

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By KELVIN CHAN, Associated Press Business Writer

LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is preventing most users from generating or editing any images after a global backlash that erupted after it started spewing sexualized deepfakes of people.

FILE – Workers install lighting on an “X” sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, July 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

The chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has in the past few weeks been granting a wave of what researchers say are malicious user requests to modify images, including putting women in bikinis or in sexually explicit positions.

Researchers have warned that in a few cases, some images appeared to depict children. Governments around the world have condemned the platform and opened investigations into the platform.

On Friday, Grok was responding to image altering requests with the message: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.”

While subscriber numbers for Grok aren’t publicly available, there was a noticeable decline in the number of explicit deepfakes that Grok is now generating compared with days earlier.

The European Union has slammed Grok for “illegal” and “appalling” behavior, while officials in France, India, Malaysia and a Brazilian lawmaker have called for investigations.

On Thursday, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer threatened unspecified action against X.

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“This is disgraceful. It’s disgusting. And it’s not to be tolerated,” Starmer said on Greatest Hits radio. “X has got to get a grip of this.”

He said media regulator Ofcom “has our full support to take action” and that “all options” are on the table.

“It’s disgusting. X need to get their act together and get this material down. We will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”

Ofcom and Britain’s privacy regulator both said this week they’ve contacted X and Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI for information on measures they’ve taken to comply with British regulations.

Grok is free to use for X users, who can ask it questions on the social media platform. They can either tag it in posts they’ve directly created or in replies to posts from other users.

Grok launched in 2023. Last summer the company added an image generator feature, Grok Imagine, that included a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.

The problem is amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative to rivals with more safeguards, and because Grok’s images are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.