NEW DELHI (AP) — Australia pacer Mitchell Starc is among the foreign players who will not return when the Indian Premier League restarts this weekend, while England batter Jos Buttler will miss the playoffs because of the rescheduling.
Virat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bengaluru take on Kolkata Knight Riders in Bengaluru on Saturday in the first game since the IPL was suspended a week ago because India and Pakistan were firing missiles at each other. A ceasefire and government clearance means all 17 remaining matches will be played but the IPL will finish on June 3, nine days later than originally planned.
That spills into foreign tours and matches. England is hosting Zimbabwe and the West Indies, Bangladesh is going to Pakistan, and the World Test Championship final between Australia and South Africa starts on June 11 at Lord's.
Cricket South Africa has denied its players extended no-objection certificates, and they must return home after May 25. Cricket West Indies has granted extended NOCs to its players until the IPL's end on June 3.
Starc, the Delhi Capitals' leading wicket-taker, has told the team he will not return. Neither will Australia and Delhi teammate Jake Fraser-McGurk.
Starc and Fraser-McGurk are understood to have been shaken by the abrupt suspension of the league. They were part of the Delhi-Punjab Kings match in Dharamsala on May 8, which was abandoned after 10.1 overs amid air raid alarms in a security blackout in north-west India.
Fast bowler Josh Hazlewood, also in Australia's WTC final squad, is rehabbing a shoulder niggle in Brisbane and will rejoin Bengaluru for the knockouts.
Australia skipper Pat Cummins and opening batter Travis Head will rejoin Sunrisers Hyderabad, despite the team out of playoffs contention.
Buttler has scored 500 runs in 11 games for the league-leading Gujarat Titans, including five half-centuries. The Titans have signed Sri Lanka's Kusal Mendis for about $90,000 as Buttler's replacement in the knockouts. Mendis will make his maiden IPL appearance, having played in the Pakistan Super League for Quetta Gladiators until the PSL was also suspended on May 7.
Bengaluru's English players Will Jacks, Liam Livingstone and Jacob Bethell have already returned. But countrymen Jofra Archer and allrounders Sam Curran and Jamie Overton won't be returning. Their teams, Rajasthan and Chennai, can't make the knockouts.
In light of players' unavailability, IPL officials have allowed franchises to sign players on short-term contracts for the remainder of the league, but these players cannot be retained ahead of the 2026 season.
Punjab signed New Zealand's Kyle Jamieson for about $230,000 in place of compatriot Lockie Ferguson, who injured a hamstring.
Lucknow Super Giants brought in New Zealand pacer Will O'Rourke for about $350,000 to replace pacer Mayank Yadav, who injured his back and was out for the season.
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Delhi Capitals' Mitchell Starc bowls a delivery during the Indian Premier League cricket match between Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals at Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamshala, India, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sluggish December hiring concluded a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment have remained low.
Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, 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 companies 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.
Still, economists were encouraged by the drop in the unemployment rate, which had risen in the previous four straight reports. It had also alarmed officials at the Federal Reserve, prompting three cuts to the central bank's key interest rate last year. The decline lowered the odds of another rate reduction in January, economists said.
“The labor market looks to have stabilized, but at a slower pace of employment growth,” Blerina Uruci, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, said. There is no urgency for the Fed to cut rates further, for now."
Some Federal Reserve officials are concerned that inflation remains above their target of 2% annual growth, and hasn't improved since 2024. They support keeping rates where they are to combat inflation. Others, however, are more worried that hiring has nearly ground to a halt and have supported lowering borrowing costs to spur spending and growth.
November's job gain was revised slightly lower, from 64,000 to 56,000, while October's now shows a much steeper drop, with a loss of 173,000 positions, down from previous estimates of a 105,000 decline. The government revises the jobs figures as it receives more survey responses from businesses.
The economy has now lost an average of 22,000 jobs a month in the past three months, the government said. A year ago, in December 2024, it had gained 209,000 a month. Most of those losses reflect the purge of government workers by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Nearly all the jobs added in December were in the health care and restaurant and hotel industries. Health care added 38,500 jobs, while restaurants and hotels gained 47,000. Governments — mostly at the state and local level — added 13,000.
Manufacturing, construction and retail companies all shed jobs. Retailers cut 25,000 positions, a sign that holiday hiring has been weaker than previous years. Manufacturers have shed jobs every month since April, when Trump announced sweeping tariffs intended to boost manufacturing.
Wall Street and Washington are looking closely at Friday's report as it's the first clean reading 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.
The hiring slowdown reflects more than just a reluctance by companies to add jobs. With an aging population and a sharp drop in immigration, the economy doesn't need to create as many jobs as it has in the past to keep the unemployment rate steady. As a result, a gain of 50,000 jobs is not as clear a sign of weakness as it would have been in previous years.
And layoffs are still low, a sign firms aren't rapidly cutting jobs, as typically happens in a recession. The “low-hire, low-fire” job market does mean current workers have some job security, though those without jobs can have a tougher time.
Ernesto Castro, 44, has applied for hundreds of jobs since leaving his last in May. Yet the Los Angeles resident has gotten just three initial interviews, and only one follow-up, after which he heard nothing.
With nearly a decade of experience providing customer support for software companies, Castro expected to find a new job pretty quickly as he did in 2024.
“I should be in a good position,” Castro said. “It’s been awful.”
He worries that more companies are turning to artificial intelligence to help clients learn to use new software. He hears ads from tech companies that urge companies to slash workers that provide the kind of services he has in his previous jobs. His contacts in the industry say that employees are increasingly reluctant to switch jobs amid all the uncertainty, which leaves fewer open jobs for others.
He is now looking into starting his own software company, and is also exploring project management roles.
December’s report caps a year of sluggish hiring, particularly after April's “liberation day” tariff announcement by Trump. 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.
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.
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.
Most economists expect hiring will accelerate this year as growth remains solid, and Trump's tax cut legislation is expected to produce large tax refunds this spring. Yet economists 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.
Productivity, or output per hour worked, a measure of worker efficiency, has improved in the past three years and jumped nearly 5% in the July-September quarter. That means companies can produce more without adding jobs. Over time, it should also boost worker pay.
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.
FILE - A hiring sign is displayed at a grocery store in Northbrook, Ill., Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
