US companies have sharply slowed their hiring this year, hesitant to invest without knowing the full effects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping economic policies. The economy lost jobs in June and August, and the average pace of job gains for the three months ending in September was only around 62,000, according to the Labor Department.

That dichotomy of an expanding economy and a softening labor market presents a conundrum for policymakers at the Federal Reserve, complicating their efforts to determine whether the economy needs cooling or boosting.

“The divergence between solid economic growth and weak job creation created a particularly challenging environment for policy decisions,” Fed officials noted in their October meeting, according to minutes released Thursday.

A growing economy, boosted by resilient consumers and massive investments in AI, should be spurring hiring, especially now that the Fed has started lowering borrowing costs. But that hasn’t happened, and there are fears it won’t.

Anybody know what's going on here? It's weird, it's like the economy isn't actually as connected to average people like we all like to think, and the affairs of the largest companies don't actually trickle down to the general population, and it's getting worse as companies strive to increase this gap with investment in AI, because labor is often the biggest cost.

And a friend wants to know if there's any disadvantage to trying to fix the entire economy with basically only one tool, that is changing interest rates to heat up or cool down the borrowing market?