Scott Horsley

After an anemic year of hiring in 2025, policymakers had hoped for some stabilization in the job market, but a new report from the Labor Department shows continued weakness.

U.S.

employers cut 92,000 jobs last month, and revised figures show the economy also lost jobs in December.

News of the softening job market comes at a time when Americans are already nervous about the high cost of living.

And those concerns will likely be amplified by the U.S.

war with Iran, which has triggered a sharp rise in energy prices.

AAA says the average price of gasoline jumped another 7 cents overnight.

At $3.32 a gallon, gasoline now costs 21 cents more than it did at this time last year.

The price of diesel fuel is up 68 cents from a year ago.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz south of Iran has come to a virtual standstill.

About 20 percent of the world's oil typically flows through that narrow waterway.

Gasoline prices have also jumped, topping $3 a gallon for the first time since early December.

The more people have to spend on gasoline, the less they have to spend on everything else.

Fears of a consumer slowdown are weighing on the broader stock market.

Natural gas prices have also jumped, which will raise both heating and electricity costs.

Even before the war started, natural gas prices had climbed nearly 10 percent over the last year, and electricity prices have been rising at more than twice the rate of inflation.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

The average price of gasoline jumped 11 cents overnight, topping $3 a gallon for the first time in three months.

Low gasoline prices had been a counterweight to inflation for most of the last year, but AAA says at $3.11 a gallon, gasoline's now slightly more expensive than it was a year ago.