The U.S. labor market added 49,000 jobs in January this year after 227,000 net layoffs last December, indicating a sluggish job market recovery. Many of the Home restrictions associated with the outbreak remain in effect.
The U.S. Department of Labor (Labor Department) announced the news in a new jobs report released Friday (Feb. 5). The report also showed that the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent in January from 6.7 percent in December of last year. The unemployment rate fell by about half a percentage point because some unemployed people found jobs while others stopped continuing to look for work and were no longer counted in the unemployed base.
The drop in the unemployment rate last December was the first in nearly eight months. At the same Time, the U.S. government is reimposing restrictions on businesses and enterprises in an effort to slow the renewed rise in the number of confirmed cases of CCHD infection.
The employer data section of the jobs report shows that the majority of new jobs added in January came from government hiring (43,000), while private sector employers added only 6,000 jobs.
“Our economy remains weak,” Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the nonprofit Job Creators Network, said in an e-mailed statement to The Epoch Times. “The governor and mayors need to continue to reopen the economy and reopen schools.”
The fastest job growth last month was in professional and business services, at 97,000, and temporary help services, at 80,900. Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs in January after adding 31,000 jobs in December.
The industries with the largest number of job losses were leisure and services (-61,000), health care and social assistance (-40,800), retail trade (-37,800) and transportation and warehousing (-27,800).
Friday’s data reflected the sluggishness of the job market. Consumers are still trying to avoid traveling, shopping, eating out, attending entertainment events, and having other forms of face-to-face contact due to the spread of the CCP virus outbreak.
Some state and local governments reimposed restrictions on businesses and merchants last December due to a spike in the number of confirmed infections. Some of these restrictions were eased in January, but perhaps not in time to affect the employment report data that measure employment in the middle of each month.
Many employers continued to lay off workers as hiring slowed. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits, while declining over the past few weeks, remained at a high of 779,000 last week.
Nearly 10 million people are still unemployed due to the Epidemic.
The jobs report comes as President Joe Biden pushes Congress to pass a massive $1.9 trillion bailout, while Republicans are calling for targeted aid to reduce the size and cost of aid.
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