It could be the calm before a storm, or it may be business as usual.

U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs in February, the first full month under the new Trump administration, extending a streak of job growth to 50 months. The unemployment rate rose to 4.1%, from 4%.

• Is the Department of Government Efficiency playing a role? The survey showed a decline of 10,000 in federal employment. But the report was based on surveys conducted in the second week of February, and economists say the administration’s mass firings, buyouts and hiring freezes at federal agencies may not fully surface in the monthly data until sometime this spring.

• What about tariffs? A similar wait is in store for those hoping to ascertain the effects that President Donald Trump’s tariffs — both those imposed and those still threatened — may have on global trading partners, business investment and employment.

• Zooming out: Even without the shake-up in foreign trade and federal employment, private-sector hiring has slowed substantially from the blowout pace of 2021-23. That has left labor market analysts and financial commentators gearing up for a potential cooling in economic growth this year.

• Context: For now, unemployment continues to glide just above record lows. And gains in average hourly earnings for workers have kept up a solid pace, overtaking inflation since mid-2023.

• What they’re saying: The stock market reacted to the report positively, as did most economists. “This is a fundamentally healthy labor market, continuing its earlier momentum, albeit at a slightly slower pace,” said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan.

• “A detox period”: In an interview Friday morning with CNBC before the release of the data, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that financial markets and the economy overall had become too reliant on government spending and there is “going to be a detox period” going forward, prompted by Trump administration cutbacks. Other Trump advisers, including Elon Musk, have also issued such warnings. “Could we be seeing that this economy that we inherited starting to roll a bit? Sure,” Bessent said.