By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

U.S. job openings rose at the start of the year, another sign the job market was solid when President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

U.S. employers posted 7.7 million vacancies in January, the Labor Department reported Tuesday, up from 7.5 million. The outlook for the labor market is murky as Trump wages a trade war with foreign countries, purges federal workers and threatens to deport millions of immigrants.

Layoffs fell slightly in January, and the number of Americans quitting their jobs rose.

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that openings rose in real estate, healthcare, manufacturing and construction firms. Federal government agencies posted 135,000 jobs, down from 138,000 in December. The fallout from purges of federal workers by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is not expected to show up in labor market data at least until the February numbers come out.

“These January data included only the earliest days of DOGE-inspired layoffs of Federal workers,” Carol Weinberg and Mary Chen of High Frequency Economics wrote in a commentary. “There is no evidence of Federal Government layoffs in this report. That does not mean that layoffs in size in Federal workers will not be a big feature of the February report, scheduled for release on April 1.”

Weinberg and Chen said that Tuesday’s JOLTS report is unlikely to sway the Federal Reserve from its cautious approach toward cutting interest rates this year. The Fed is expected to leave its benchmark rate alone at its meeting next week. “The (Fed) will find no cause to rush to cut rates in today’s data,” they wrote. “The labor market does not need it, at least not yet.”

Openings are down from 8.5 million in January 2024 and a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 when the economy was roaring back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

The American labor market has slowed from the frenzied hiring of 2021-2023. Employers added 168,000 jobs a month in 2024, decent but down from 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022 and a record 603,000 in 2021.

They created 125,000 new jobs in January and 151,000 in February. The unemployment rate is a low 4.1%.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s sell-off is slowing on Tuesday, for now at least, following a scary stretch where worries about the economy and tariffs sent it close to 9% below its all-time high.

The S&P 500 was down 0.3% in early trading. While still a loss, such a modest move would be a respite after the main measure of Wall Street’s health swung by at least 1%, up or down, seven times in the last eight days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 202 points, or 0.5%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time. A day earlier, it had been down more than 1,100 points at one point. The Nasdaq composite was virtually unchanged.

Several Big Tech stocks held steadier after getting walloped in recent months. Elon Musk’s Tesla rose 1.1%, for example. President Donald Trump even said he would buy a Tesla in a show of support for “Elon’s ‘baby.’ ”

A day earlier, the electric-vehicle company’s stock tumbled 15.4% to deepen its loss for the young year so far to 45%. Trump blamed political opponents who are “trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla,” as Musk leads efforts in Washington to cut spending by the federal government.

Other Big Tech superstars, which had led the market to record after record in recent years, also held a bit firmer. Nvidia rose 1.2% to trim its loss for the year so far to 19.3%. It’s struggled as the market’s sell-off has weighed heavily on stocks seen as getting too expensive in Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Still, warning signals continue to flash about the economy, where Trump’s on -and- off -again rollout of tariffs has caused confusion and pessimism among U.S. households and businesses. The fear is that whipsaw moves will either hurt the economy directly or create enough uncertainty to drive U.S. companies and consumers into an economy-freezing paralysis.

Delta Air Lines said late Monday that it’s already seeing the change in confidence and that demand is waning for close-in bookings for flights. That pushed it to roughly halve its forecast for revenue growth in the first three months of 2025, down to a range of 3% to 4% from a range of 7% to 9%.

Delta’s stock lost 5.2%.

Southwest Airlines also cut its forecast for an important underlying revenue trend, pointing to less government travel, among other reasons. But its stock nevertheless rallied 8.9% after the airline said it would soon begin charging some passengers to check bags and announced changes to encourage its most loyal customers.

Oracle dropped 6.4% after the technology giant reported profit and revenue for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Stocks rose 0.4% in Shanghai and were nearly unchanged in Hong Kong as China’s annual national congress wrapped up its annual session with some measures to help boost the slowing economy.

In the bond market, Treasury yields held steadier after tumbling in recent months on worries about the U.S. economy. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was holding at 4.22%, where it was late Monday. In January, it was nearing 4.80%.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

If the Vikings decide to hand the keys over to young quarterback J.J. McCarthy next season, they are doing everything in their power to make sure he has time to throw the ball.

A source confirmed to the Pioneer Press that the Vikings have agreed to terms with guard Will Fries. It’s a massive 5-year, $88 million deal for Fries, who started his career with the Indianapolis Colts, and was regarded by many as the best player at his position on the open market.

The agreement with Fries comes roughly 12 hours after the Vikings agreed to terms with Pro Bowl center Ryan Kelly on a 2-year, $18 million deal. The fact the Vikings have committed to both players, who were teammates with the Colts, shows how much they have prioritized adding talent in the trenches.

To say the interior of the offensive line was a major weakness for the Vikings last season would be an understatement.

Whether it was the inconsistent play of left guard Blake Brandel rearing its ugly head at the worst time, the seemingly constant struggles of right guard Ed Ingram ruining plays right from the snap, or any of the other lowlights in between, the Vikings entered this offseason knowing they needed to improve that part of the roster.

That’s exactly what they have done so far while also adding talent in various other areas.

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By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON, Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security skipped a fully competitive bidding process to give two Republican-linked firms the first part of a $200 million television ad campaign that lauds President Donald Trump for his crackdown on illegal immigration.

DHS told news outlets last month that it had undergone a “competitive procurement process” for the campaign. But in a document posted Friday on a federal database, the department said Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border constitutes “an unusual and compelling urgency,” a circumstance that allows federal agencies to bypass the usual competitive process.

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The ads feature Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a blue suit standing with a backdrop of American flags thanking Trump. The ads have caught some attention as they mix campaign-style images of Trump signing executive orders and flying on Air Force One with clips of large groups of migrants crossing the Rio Grande and police cars with sirens blaring.

Noem warns immigrants to leave the U.S. or not to come. “If you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return,” she says in one of the videos.

One of the winning firms is People Who Think, LLC, which is owned by Jay Connaughton, a Louisiana-based political consultant who served as media adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Connaughton appeared to have worked as recently as October 2023 with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in the campaign of Jeff Landry, for governor of Louisiana. Lewandowski, a longtime Noem adviser going back to her tenure as South Dakota governor, mentioned him in a post on X as part of the team that helped elect Landry.

The other firm selected for the contract was Safe America Media, LLC, which was incorporated in Delaware a few days before the solicitation with an address to a property owned by Republican consultant Mike McElwain. Safe America Media has already been awarded $16 million for the ad buy.

Connaughton and McElwain did not respond to messages and calls seeking comment. DHS still called it a “competitive process” in a statement provided to The Associated Press.

“Following a competitive process with multiple companies competing to deliver the best service, product, and price for American taxpayers, Safe America Media and People Who Think both earned a shared contract for this targeted national and international campaign,” it said. “Multiple career government officials oversaw this competitive procurement process.”

The document posted on a federal contracting database reads in part: “DHS requires an immediate domestic and international campaign to direct illegal aliens within the U.S. and its territories to leave immediately, and to discourage illegal immigration into the country.”

DHS reviewed industry publications and vendors specializing on hyper-targeted media and advertising services and narrowed its search down to four companies that were able to work immediately.

“Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation,” the document says.

President Donald Trump, from left, holds the new FIFA Club World Cup official ball as FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watch in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 7, 2025. (Pool via AP)

Noem shared the story behind the ad campaign at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. She said she had suggested conducting more news conferences to keep the public posted on its immigration actions, but Trump asked for those ads “to make sure the American people know the truth of what you’re doing.”

“But he said, ‘I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. I will thank you for closing the border.’”

Most of the money spent so far in airing the ads has been on English-language TV stations with more than $2 million, compared to the $360,000 spent to air them in Spanish-language stations around the country, data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact shows.

The data shows it has aired the most in TV stations in Phoenix, Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Dallas. It has also been tracked running on Fox News in larger markets, with most airings captured in the Washington and Philadelphia areas.

Associated Press writer Byron Tau in Washington contributed to this report.