A person performs a self-swab test for COVID-19 in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, Dec. 17, 2021. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
December's job market strengthened as the fallout from the Delta variant faded and Omicron's impact had yet to be seen.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. employers have added 199,000 jobs in December, with the unemployment rate falling by 0.3 percentage point to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday.
The job growth is far below the expectations of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, which estimated a job gain of 422,000 jobs. It also represented the smallest monthly gain in a year.
Employment continued to trend up in sectors like leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, manufacturing, construction, and transportation and warehousing, said the report.
The latest data also showed that the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage point to 3.9 percent in December, after dropping by 0.4 percentage point in November. The measure was down considerably from its recent high in April 2020, but remained above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent.
Large crowds flock to the State Street shopping district in Chicago, the United States, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Joel Lerner/Xinhua)
As of December last year, U.S. nonfarm employment has increased by 18.8 million since April 2020 but is still 3.6 million, or 2.3 percent below its pre-pandemic level, according to the report.
The number of unemployed persons declined by 483,000 to 6.3 million, the report showed, adding that the measure also remained above the pre-pandemic level of 5.7 million.
Among the unemployed, the number of permanent job losers declined by 202,000 to 1.7 million in December but is 408,000 higher than in February 2020. The number of persons on temporary layoff, at 812,000, has essentially returned to its February 2020 level, according to the report.
The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.9 percent in December but remains 1.5 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic level, the report showed. Over the year, the measure has increased by 0.4 percentage point.
The report came two days after the payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported that U.S. private companies had added 807,000 jobs in December.
Passengers wearing face masks are seen at the Union Station in Los Angeles, California, the United States, Dec. 15, 2021. (Xinhua)
Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, noted that December's job market strengthened as the fallout from the Delta variant faded and Omicron's impact had yet to be seen.
On Thursday, the department reported that initial jobless claims in the United States last week rose to 207,000 amid the COVID-19 Omicron variant surge, signaling that the new variant is a headwind facing the U.S. labor market recovery.
The unemployment rate is expected to fall back to 3.5 percent by the end of 2022, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics.
Labor force participation, however, is unlikely to return to its pre-pandemic level as some workers have permanently left the workforce during the pandemic to retire.
Economists at Oxford Economics expected the labor force participation rate to rise to around 62.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, still below its pre-pandemic level of 63.3 percent. ■
