Quick Facts:
- Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 467,000 in January.
- Unemployment rate edged up by 0.1 percent to 4.0 percent.
- Employment growth continued in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, in retail trade, and in transportation and warehousing.
- The number of unemployed persons decreased by 467,000 to 6.5 million.
- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) declined by 300,000 to 1.7 million in January.
- Among the unemployed, the number of job leavers increased to 952,000 in January, following a decrease in the prior month.
Looking Forward:
- A record-setting spike in coronavirus cases wasn’t enough to derail the job market recovery at the beginning of the year. Hiring rose higher than expectations.
- Service industries were hit hard in January as the latest coronavirus surge led to absences among employees, kept customers away and compounded supply constraints. Perhaps no sector was struck harder than the restaurant and bar industry.
- “The economic fallout from each successive wave of the pandemic has been smaller and smaller,” Nick Bunker, economist at jobs site Indeed, said in a note. “This trend, along with strong demand for workers suggests 2022 could be a year with continued strong gains for the labor market.”
- The unemployment rate rose slightly in January to 4% from 3.9% in December, with more people joining the workforce. Low joblessness is helping spur wage growth. Wages climbed 5.7% in January from a year earlier, nearly double the average of about 3% before the pandemic hit.
- Omicron still affected the job market in January. The variant sent millions of sick workers into quarantine, exacerbating labor shortages at restaurants, airlines and public-transit systems. 3.6 million Americans were employed but absent from work due to illness in January, up from two million in Jan 2021 and 1.1 million in Jan 2020.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
