How Giving Over Its Oil to the U.S. Could Revive Venezuela’s Economy

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The US labor market finished off 2025 with another month of slow hiring. Plus, why the US selling Venezuela's oil could be a ticket to the South American country's turnaround.

Kejal Vyas (0:44)

All of this really hinges on a very, very fragile political detente between the US and Venezuela. So ensuring that this money gets to them is going to be very vital for the stability of the Venezuelan economy.

Alex Ossola (0:58)

And Iran's leader says he won't bow down to protestors or President Trump as demonstrations rock Tehran. It's Friday, January 9th. I'm Alex Ossola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

The last Labor Department jobs report for 2025 came out today, showing more of the same for the US economy. Hiring is still weak, but businesses also aren't slashing jobs left and right. For December, American employers added 50,000 jobs, a tiny bit less than the month before. And the unemployment rate inched down to 4.4%. That's pretty low historically, which is good. To help us dissect the latest job numbers, I'm joined now by WSJ economics correspondent Harriet Torry. Harriet, in your story, you quote an economist who says we're at an inflection point. Walk us through that a little bit. What has been on employers' minds this year that's been making them wary of hiring?

Harriet Torry (1:56)

So the overall number of jobs added in 2025 was 584,000.

And that is a dramatic slowdown from 2024 when the economy added too many jobs. So it's been a very unusual year in the sense that economic growth has actually been really strong. And yet we've seen this real slowdown in hiring. So what's going on? You know, a lot of businesses seem to be very cautious because of the tariff environment that has increased costs for businesses. And one way that businesses can try and save costs is by hiring fewer people. And we've seen consumer sentiment really plunge. We've seen the quits rate drop a lot, which is kind of a measure of how confident people feel about finding a new job. So 2026 is going to be an interesting year because we could see people start to feel more confident about the outlook for tariffs and inflation. But at the same time, there just seems to be this general hesitation. And it's taking jobseekers longer to find work and a lot of people are struggling.

Alex Ossola (2:55)

We know the Fed has been very concerned that the labor market could all of a sudden take a turn for the worst. What does this jobs report signal to policy makers?

Harriet Torry (3:03)

So the good news for the Fed is that the unemployment rate take down. But at the same time, job growth is still pretty weak. The general consensus is that they're likely to stay on hold in January.

Alex Ossola (3:13)

That was WSJ economics correspondent, Harriet Torry. And speaking of today's jobs report, President Trump last night posted some stats from it online that were supposed to be confidential until this morning. The White House says it was an accident.

The Coast Guard took control of an oil tanker early this morning, the fifth such seizure in the US campaign to track down Venezuelan oil. And US officials say they're looking at other ships that are trying to evade the US blockade on sanctioned tankers traveling to and from Venezuela. The Trump administration has big plans for the country's oil. As you've heard from us this week, President Trump says Venezuela is turning over up to 50 million barrels to the US and the money from those sales would benefit both countries. Some economists say this plan could actually help Venezuela's economy. I'm joined now by journal reporter Kejal Vyas, who's in Bogota, Colombia. Kejal, break down how exactly this would work. What does it depend on for Venezuela to benefit from turning over its oil?

Kejal Vyas (4:11)

So there's still a lot of details on this plan that we do not know. The US has said that it will handle Venezuela's oil sales, hold proceeds of those sales in some account controlled by the US government, and will eventually transfer that money to Venezuela. But they say they will do so in a way that does not enrich the corrupt regime and does not enrich the fat cats, so to speak. They want this money to be only used for the benefit of Venezuelan people and stimulating imports.