By STAN CHOE
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is careening again on Friday and swerving from gains to losses. It’s a fitting ending to a brutal week of scary swings dominated by worries about the U.S. economy and uncertainty about what President Donald Trump will do with tariffs.
The S&P 500 was edging up by 0.1% in afternoon trading, but that was only after flipping between an earlier gain of 0.6% and loss of 1.3%. It’s coming off a punishing stretch where it swung at least 1%, up or down, in each of the last six days, and it’s on track for its worst week since September.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 110 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:55 p.m., and the Nasdaq composite was basically flat.
Much of Wall Street’s focus was on the job market, where the U.S. Labor Department said in a highly anticipated report that employers added 151,000 more jobs last month than they cut. That was slightly below economists’ expectations, but it was an acceleration from January’s hiring.
U.S. stocks have been struggling, and the S&P 500 has dropped roughly 6.5% from its all-time high set last month on worries that the U.S. economy’s growth may be slowing. Recent, discouraging surveys have shown souring confidence for U.S. businesses and households because of uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs, but economists weren’t sure if that had translated into real pain for the economy and job market.
While Friday’s jobs data did come in close to expectations, economists warned of concerning details underneath the surface that could imply trouble ahead. The number of people working part time who would rather be full time rose 10% in February from January, for example.
“The market might breathe a sigh of relief that the labor market was still looking healthy, but a deeper dive shows that spring could be a more challenging season,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.
The whiplash actions from the White House on tariffs — first placing them on trading partners and then exempting some and then doing it again — have raised uncertainty for businesses.
That sparked fears that businesses might freeze in response to what they have called “chaos” and pull back on hiring. U.S. households, meanwhile, are bracing for much higher inflation because of tariffs, which is weakening their confidence and could hold back their spending. That would sap more energy from the economy.
Trump said Friday he wants tariffs to bring jobs back to the United States, and he gave no indication more certainty is imminent for financial markets. “There will always be changes and adjustments,” he said in comments from the Oval Office.
“There could be some disturbance,” Trump said about the effect on the economy before saying, “I solved a little bit of that” by giving a one-month reprieve on tariffs for Mexican and Canadian imports for automakers.
In the bond market, Treasury yields were also jostling up and down. The 10-year Treasury yield fell as low as 4.22% after the jobs report before climbing to 4.29%, up from 4.28% late Thursday. It’s been generally sinking since January, when it was nearing 4.80%, as investors have ratcheted back their expectations for the U.S. economy’s growth.
The yield on the two-year Treasury note has also been easing recently, underscoring building expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate at least two or three times this year in order to prop up a slowing economy.
Lower interest rates would help U.S. borrowers, but they could also make inflation worse. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said again Friday that the central bank’s plan for now is to wait and see on rates, after it paused its sharp cuts that carried through the end of last year.
“The costs of being cautious are very very low” right now, he said. “The economy is fine. It doesn’t need us to do anything really. We can wait, and we should wait.”
On Wall Street, Hewlett Packard Enterprises slumped 15.4% after reporting profit for the latest quarter that fell just short of analysts’ expectations. CEO Antonio Neri acknowledged that “we could have executed better in some areas in the quarter,” and the company gave a forecast for revenue in the current quarter that was weaker than expected.
Costco sank 7.3% after the retailer reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than expected.
They helped offset Walgreens Boots Alliance, which rallied 7.7% after the pharmacy and drug store chain agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. The buyout would take the struggling chain private for the first time since 1927 and give it more flexibility to make changes to improve its business without worrying about Wall Street’s reaction.
Broadcom rose 6.8% after delivering stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The chip company also gave a forecast for upcoming revenue that topped analysts’ expectation, thanks in part to strong demand for its artificial-intelligence offerings.
In stock markets abroad, German stocks dropped 1.8% to give back some of the big gains from earlier in the week following a seismic shift in its policy on debt. The traditionally debt-averse German government appears willing to allow for much more borrowing.
Indexes also fell across much of the rest of Europe and Asia.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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