WASHINGTON — The U.S. labor market probably started 2025 the way it spent most of last year: Generating decent, but unspectacular, job growth.

When the Labor Department releases January employment numbers Friday, they’re likely to show that companies, government agencies and nonprofits added 170,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of economists by the data firm FactSet. That would be a respectable performance but also a downshift from 2024 which averaged 186,000 new jobs a month, including a surge of 256,000 in December. The unemployment rate is expected to remain low at 4.1%.

The first monthly jobs report of Donald Trump’s second presidency is likely to confirm that he inherited a solid economy, one in which consumers enjoy job security and rising wages that give them the confidence and financial wherewithal to spend freely.

“The economy is kicking off 2025 in good shape,’’ said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.

The future is cloudier.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to push out federal workers by offering them financial incentives, yet a federal hiring freeze that Trump imposed Jan. 20 is a “negative for employment growth,’’ Bradley Saunders, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a commentary last week. The freeze came after the Labor Department collected the January jobs numbers, so any impact would be revealed in upcoming employment data.

Likewise, a cold snap that probably increased seasonal layoffs in the Midwest and Northeast occurred late in January and won’t register in government jobs data until the February numbers come out, Saunders wrote.

Economists are also worried about Trump’s threat to wage a trade war against other countries. He’s already imposed a 10% tax on imports from China.

Canada and Mexico – America’s two largest trading partners — remain in his crosshairs though he gave them a 30-day reprieve from the 25% tariffs he was planning to sock them with on Tuesday, allowing time for negotiations. Trump says that America’s two neighbors and allies haven’t done enough to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States. Trump is also itching to slap tariffs on the European Union; pointing to America’s deficit in the trade of goods with the EU, which came to $236 billion last year, he says that Europe treats U.S. exporters unfairly.

The tariffs, which are paid by U.S. importers who generally try to pass along the cost to customers, could rekindle inflation – which has fallen from the four-decade high it reached in mid-2022 but is still stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. If the tariffs push prices higher, the Fed may cancel or postpone the two interest-rate cuts it had forecast for this year. And that would be bad for economic growth and job creation.

The job market has already cooled from the red-hot days of 2021-2023. American payrolls increased by 2.2 million last year, down from 3 million in 2023, 4.5 million in 2022 and a record 7.2 million in 2021 as the economy roared back from COVID-19 lockdowns. The Labor Department also reports that employers are posting fewer jobs. Monthly job openings have tumbled from a record 12.2 million in March 2022, to 7.6 million in December – still a decent number by historical standards.

As the labor market cools, American workers are losing confidence in their ability to find better pay or working conditions by changing jobs. The number of people quitting has fallen from a record 4.5 million near the height of the hiring boom in April 2022, to December’s 3.2 million, which is below pre-pandemic levels.

Still, layoffs remain below pre-pandemic levels, creating an unusual situation: If you are employed, you probably enjoy job security. If you’re looking for one, things have gotten tougher.

The Labor Department is also expected to report annually released revisions Friday that will show job creation from April 2023 through March 2024 wasn’t as strong as originally reported.

A preliminary version of the revisions, released in August, showed that 818,000 fewer jobs were created over those 12 months – lowering average monthly hiring during that span from 242,000 to 174,000. Because they are not final, the August estimates have not yet been added to the official government payroll numbers. The revisions out Friday will become official and part of the historic data.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Taylor Cagnacci moved from California to Tennessee with hopes of starting a new chapter in a state that touts a low cost of living and natural beauty.

But she’s infuriated by Tennessee’s meager social services, which leave her and many other moms struggling in a state where abortion is banned with limited exceptions.

“I was going to have my child no matter what, but for other women, that’s kind of a crappy situation that they put you in,” said Cagnacci, a 29-year-old Kingsport mom who relies on Medicaid and a federally funded nutrition program. “You have to have your child. But where’s the assistance afterward?”

Tennessee has a porous safety net for mothers and young children, recent research and an analysis by The Associated Press found. It’s unknown how many women in the state have given birth because they didn’t have access to abortion, but it is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child and a financially stable family than the average American mom.

Like other states with strict abortion bans, Tennesseans of childbearing age are more likely to live in maternal care deserts and face overall doctor shortages. Women, infants and children are less likely to be enrolled in a government nutrition program known as WIC. And Tennessee is one of only 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid to a greater share of low-income families.

“It’s survival, every day,” said Janie Busbee, founder of Mother to Mother, a Nashville-based nonprofit providing baby supplies for low-income moms. “If we took some of that stress off of them, then maybe they’d have time to dream.”

GOP state leaders in Tennessee and other states that banned abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 argue that they are bolstering services for families.

Tennessee boosted its Medicaid coverage for mothers in 2022 from 60 days postpartum to a year, which allowed an additional 3,000 moms to use the program each year.

The state also raised the Medicaid income limit for parents to the poverty level — nearly $26,000 for a family of three — and offers recipients 100 free diapers a month for babies under two. According to the governor’s office, these changes have resulted in thousands of new parents accessing government services.

“Pro-life is much more than defending the lives of the unborn,” Republican Gov. Bill Lee said in his 2023 annual address to lawmakers and echoed more recently on social media. “This is not a matter of politics. This is about human dignity.”

Yet, nonprofit leaders and mothers told the AP there are still significant gaps in the safety net.

Anika Chillis, a 39-year-old single mom in Memphis, has Medicaid, WIC and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps). While she’s deeply grateful for the help, she said it also can disappear — like when she temporarily lost WIC.

“It’s hard,” she said, sitting on a park bench as her 2-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter played nearby. “Groceries are constantly going up.” And being a single mom “makes it doubly hard on you.”

Tennessee fared poorly at WIC enrollment, Medicaid, having enough maternal care and requirements for paid family and medical leave, an October study found.

Other states with similarly restrictive abortion laws — such as Idaho, Alabama, Missouri, Georgia and Mississippi — ranked poorly on numerous measures, too. Researchers said restrictive states had a slightly higher average birth rate and a much lower average abortion rate than the least restrictive states.

“In general, these states that restrict abortion are the more fiscally conservative, the more socially conservative states,” said Dr. Nigel Madden, lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The Republican supermajority in the Tennessee legislature has long rebuffed efforts to expand Medicaid to people earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $35,600 for a family of three. And TennCare faces criticism already, with a federal judge ruling earlier this year that the state unlawfully terminated coverage for thousands of families and had a “lethargic” response to nearly 250,000 children losing coverage because of paperwork problems caused by the state.

DiJuana Davis, 44, was among the plaintiffs. In 2019, the Nashville resident was supposed to have surgery to prevent pregnancy and ease her chronic anemia. Days before the procedure, she was informed her Medicaid coverage had been cut off and the hospital was canceling.

She later found out her renewal paperwork went to the wrong address, an error that left her uninsured for two months — during which she became pregnant and developed preeclampsia. Doctors induced labor to save her life, and her son was born prematurely.

“The system is broken,” she said, “and it needs to be fixed.”

More than 3% of the 83,000 babies born in Tennessee in 2023 had mothers who didn’t receive prenatal care. Only seven states had a higher share, according to an AP analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After birth, doctor shortages impede ongoing care. Around a third of Tennesseans live in a primary care shortage area — a greater share than in all but 10 other states — according to an AP analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Moms described several aid programs as frustrating to navigate. Chillis was on WIC for several months after her son was born, but then went without because of mistake during the renewal process — eventually getting it restored with help from the nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center.

Chillis credits a nonprofit preschool provider with linking her to aid programs in the first place: “I don’t see a lot of advertisements about, you know, how you can join this program or go get this” service, she said. “People just don’t have the knowledge.”

Cagnacci, who is pregnant and has a 1-year-old, said she was on SNAP for a while but missed an appointment and was unclear about the steps after that. The process to get recertified was “such a headache” that she’s going without it.

“I just felt like it was purposely being made difficult so that I would just give up,” she said.

Women with young children in states where abortion is banned or limited to early weeks of pregnancy said it can be tough to get social services there, according to a survey by the health policy research organization KFF. Nearly half said it’s difficult for women in their state to get food stamps, for example, compared with 3 in 10 in states where abortion is generally available.

“People who claim to be pro-life, who advocated for these abortion bans, often suggest that these policies are designed to protect children, women and families,” said Madden, the researcher. But the weakness of the safety net shows “the hypocrisy of that argument.”

Tennessee’s new diaper program shows the deep political divisions surrounding aid programs. The Republican governor described it as an effort to strengthen families while Democratic state Sen. London Lamar said GOP leaders are “trying to put a little bow on an abortion ban.” And GOP state Sen. Mark Pody recently told the right-leaning news website Tennessee Conservative that “it is not the state’s responsibility to have a diaper for every single baby” and floated the possibility of cutting the program.

Of Tennessee’s 2.8 million households, 30% earn above the poverty level but not enough to afford the basic cost of living in their counties, according to a recent report. Often, they don’t qualify for government help.

“Some are working three jobs and still can’t survive,” said Busbee, of Mother to Mother.

A fragmented patchwork of charities can help, but they don’t cover the entire state. The Nashville Diaper Connection, for example, serves 30 counties, working with partners to provide 50 diapers a month, mostly to working families who make a bit too much for Medicaid. Other nonprofits are hindered in helping by government agencies’ income rules. And most charities are constrained by the ebb and flow of donations.

Nonprofit leaders fear their job may get harder with a new administration in Washington and a GOP-controlled Congress. Republicans could seek significant changes to federal assistance programs they’ve long criticized, like Medicaid and food stamps.

“We’ve been through four years of a Trump administration, and the goal under the Trump administration was to cut social services,” said Signe Anderson, the justice center’s senior director of nutrition advocacy. “I’m concerned … for families in Tennessee and across the country.”

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Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee. AP data journalists Kasturi Pananjady and Nicky Forster contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A nonprofit leader who supports at-risk New Orleans youth. A social worker who fosters animals. A counselor and recovery coach who volunteers at organizations that fight sexual assault and domestic violence.

They are among the roughly 1,540 people whose sentences were commuted or who were pardoned by President Joe Biden on Thursday in what was the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

But not everyone was pleased by Biden’s decisions. A Republican state senator said a commutation for a woman who stole $54 million from a small town in Illinois was “a slap in the face” to residents.

Here are some of their stories:

Fulton was pardoned after pleading guilty to participating in a payroll fraud scheme while serving as a New Orleans middle school teacher in the early 2000s. She was convicted of a felony and sentenced to three years of probation in 2008.

Fulton, who has two children and works as an elementary school teacher, said that for years she had lived with “a sense of embarrassment and shame” about the felony conviction.

Even though she completed a master’s degree in educational leadership in 2017, Fulton felt that her criminal record disqualified her from applying for principal positions she felt she could handle.

“The conviction has served as a mental barrier for me, limiting my ability to live a full life,” Fulton said.

Nearly a decade after she first applied for a presidential pardon, Fulton this week received a phone call informing her that it had been granted. “It was astonishing for me, I wasn’t expecting a call,” Fulton said, adding that the pardon will enable her to explore more career opportunities.

A White House news release commended Fulton as “someone who goes above and beyond for her community.” For years, Fulton has helped lead a nonprofit supporting at-risk New Orleans youth with hot meals, clothing and shelter and mental health referrals.

Doyle applied for a pardon six years ago. It had been so long that she had all but forgotten about it — until Wednesday.

“I was in shock,” Doyle said of the call she received from a Justice Department pardon attorney. “And honored.”

Doyle, who was once addicted to meth, had pleaded guilty to drug possession and check forging charges when she was 24. She served more than two years in state and federal prison.

Released in 2006, Doyle resolved to stay clean. She started a family, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and now works as a social worker with a behavioral health center.

Doyle applied for a pardon in 2018 and heard nothing until 2020, when the FBI reached out — and the vetting began.

“They talked to my boss, my boss’ boss, they talked to my mother’s boss, they called my doctors,” Doyle said. “Just pretty much anybody that had any type of relationship with me in the past 20 years they contacted.”

After the vetting was over, she would have to wait some more: four years, it turned out.

“I just want people to know that are in the throes of addiction, or families to know that when they have somebody in their family that is addicted, that there is hope,” Doyle said Thursday. “This has just brought so much joy to me and my family and is just the continuation of my recovery.”

She has five children and three grandchildren, volunteers in her community, fosters animals and competes in roller derby.

Crundwell was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison in 2013 for stealing about $54 million over two decades when she was in charge of finances for Dixon, Illinois.

She was released to a halfway house program in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic before moving to home confinement. Biden’s commutation releases Crundwell from any restrictions.

Paul Gaziano, a lawyer who represented Crundwell in federal court, declined to comment Thursday.

Dixon Mayor Glen Hughes said he believes most of the town is probably stunned, and maybe even angry, that Biden would provide clemency to Crundwell. Republican state Sen. Andrew Chesney called Biden’s act “nothing short of a slap in the face to the people of Dixon.”

Dixon, best known as the childhood home of President Ronald Reagan, sued auditors and a bank after Crundwell’s theft was revealed and recovered $40 million in settlements.

Crundwell, who was a horse breeder, told a judge in 2020 that more than $15 million was repaid from the sale of her horses and other assets.

“I am going to do everything possible to make up for my mistakes,” she told the judge in a handwritten letter that described various health problems. “I have taken responsibility for my actions since the first day.”

Castroflay was pardoned after pleading guilty to nonviolent, drug-related offenses at age 21, the White House said.

After completing his sentence, Castroflay continued his career in the U.S. Army and went on to work as a civilian for both the Army and the Air Force, receiving multiple awards.

He took night classes to earn a bachelor’s degree while working full-time.

Castroflay volunteers for several charitable organizations that support Gold Star families and wounded service members. He has been described as exceptionally hard-working, dedicated and trustworthy by those who know him.

Faulkner was pardoned after pleading guilty to a nonviolent drug offense and serving her sentence, the White House said.

Since then, Faulkner furthered her education and now works as a counselor and recovery coach with female trauma victims and people with disabilities.

Faulkner also volunteers with organizations dedicated to preventing sexual assault and domestic violence, as well as with local charities.

Colleagues attest to her inspirational character, her integrity and the remarkable impact she makes on the lives of those she helps.

Terence Jackson of Seattle was pardoned after pleading guilty to a nonviolent drug offense he committed when he was 23.

If Jackson had been sentenced under current law and sentencing practices, he probably would have received a shorter sentence, the White House said.

In the years since his release, Jackson has worked in the legal industry and is pursuing a degree while he works full-time.

Jackson has also volunteered, including as a barber to children in need. He is described by those who know him as dependable and caring and as someone who always tries to help others.

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Associated Press writers Jack Brook in New Orleans, Ed White in Detroit, Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Wash., contributed to this report.