The latest report signals the labor market is still struggling to add back jobs lost during the pandemic amid the looming threat of the omicron coronavirus variant
Though unemployment fell to its lowest level in nearly two years, the U.S. added back a worse-than-expected 199,000 jobs in December—signaling the labor market is still struggling to add back jobs lost during the pandemic amid the looming threat of the omicron coronavirus variant....
Despite the worse-than-expected report, the unemployment rate clocked in at 3.9%, compared to 4.2% in November—hitting its lowest point in more than a year but still well above prepandemic levels of about 3.5%. The number of unemployed people in the United States fell by 483,000 to 6.3 million, which is much better than pandemic highs around April 2020 but still more than the 5 million in February 2020, the government said.How the latest surge in Covid cases will impact the job market's recovery.