The national economy added just 49,000 jobs in January after losing a revised 227,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported today, underscoring the severe effects of the winter pandemic spike on Americans’ willingness to shop, eat in restaurants or travel large distances.
Despite the small job gain, the unemployment rate fell 0.4 points, to 6.3 percent, lowering the number of unemployed persons to 10.1 million. Total employment is almost 10 million–or 6.6 percent–short of where it was a year ago, when the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent and just 5.7 million people were officially unemployed, or 7.7 percent when the underemployed and discouraged workers are counted. That alternative rate of labor utilization, a more accurate count of the unemployed and underemployed, is currently 11.1 percent, down from 11.7 percent last month.
It includes 7 million workers who were not counted as unemployed in the official statistics because they had not actively looked for work in the four weeks surveyed by the Labor Department. It also includes 6 million workers who are employed part-time because they couldn’t find full time work, or because their hours were cut back. Those are termed the involuntary part-time workers.
Some 14.8 million people reported that they had been unable to work or were forced to work fewer hours because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic, with 12.7 percent of them receiving some pay for hours not worked. That’s an improvement of 1.1 million workers over December. In January, 23.2 percent of the workforce worked remote in some fashion in the four weeks surveyed.
The leisure and hospitality sector, including hotels, amusement parks, restaurants and bars lost 61,000 jobs after losing 536,000 in December. The sector had lost 8.2 million jobs last spring when the nation locked down, recovering about half those jobs until November. But the sector is still 3.9 million jobs short of where it was before the coronavirus pandemic, or 22.9 percent below its pre-covid level.
Retail trade lost 38,000 jobs in January after adding 135,000 jobs the previous month, accounting for holiday sales. Health care saw a drop of 30,000 jobs, led by a 19,000-job loss in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Transportation and warehousing, manufacturing and construction also saw job losses, but not as steep as other sectors.
Sectors gaining jobs included professional and business services, which often can afford their employees the opportunity to work from remote locations. That sector added 97,000 jobs. Local, public education added 49,000 jobs, with state and private schools adding another 70,000. Wholesale trade and mining added a modest number of jobs.
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Mark says
Don’t forget Joe’s job cuts. Thanks Joe.
The Voice Of Reason says
Mark, What planet do you live on. Q-anon? Give the guy a chance. Any President needs time to effect change. Good or bad. Dumpster donnie would be working his hardest to give the 1% a huge deficit busting tax cut that would trickle down into their bank account. That and IGNORE covid-19 which he was expert at. You might try actually researching issues instead of knee jerk comments like the one you uttered.
Ray W. says
I guess Mark is talking about the northern leg of the XL pipeline. There is a southern leg of the XL pipeline, owned by the same Canadian company. The southern leg of the XL pipeline opened years ago, pushing over 600,000 barrels of North Dakota crude oil per day from Nebraska to Houston. Trains carry the crude oil from North Dakota to Nebraska. When the XL pipeline was proposed, no one knew that North Dakota production would rise from about 100,000 barrels per day to breaking the one million barrel per day threshold over four years ago, due to increased fracking activity. Before the southern leg opened, rail tank cars carried the increased oil production from North Dakota all the way to Houston. If the northern leg of the XL pipeline connects to the southern leg, Canadian crude oil will displace North Dakota crude oil and rail companies will again have to transport the oil all the way to Houston, unless another southern leg is built. A significant percentage of North Dakota oil will suddenly become more expensive, because the last time I checked rail transport of crude oil all the way to Houston costs approximately three times what pipeline transport costs. I wonder how many permanent American oil company jobs will be lost because 600,000 barrels of North Dakota crude oil will become more expensive? Capitalism and the invisible hand of the marketplace, and all that. Of course, train companies will be adding jobs and making money, so that might offset the oil companies’ losses. BNSF is the rail company that owns the track from North Dakota to Houston (my son works for BNSF). Before the southern leg opened, BNSF was running maximum capacity trains as fast as they could, but they had so much oil to carry that an entire crop of wheat was left in North Dakota because oil companies were willing to pay higher freight costs. Once the southern leg opened, traffic lessened and the wheat finally made it to market. Will North Dakota farmers lose money as their winter wheat crops spill out of silos and onto the ground, because there is no room for wheat? In Florida, trains can be hundreds of cars long, because the land is flat. In mountainous regions, the trains can only be so long, and the marshalling yards are designed to handle trains of that length. You would have to redesign the marshalling yards and add additional locomotives to pull longer trains. Or build additional track. Boy, this is beginning to look like a complex problem, with jobs lost and gained all over the place. Losing temporary welding jobs and holding onto permanent oil field jobs might seem to some a fair tradeoff. Biden’s action might have more to it than Mark is letting on.
Steve says
Let’s not forget the total disarray that 45 left all of us starting out with C19 denial and ignored for months nice job DONNIE.
Michael Cocchiola says
President Biden took office on January 20. To which of “Joe’s job cuts” are you referring? The ones held by Don, Ivanka, Jared, Rudi, Rudi’s son, Miller, McEnany, Meadows, Barr, Pompeo, and the rest of Don’s dysfunctional mob of political appointees? That national cleansing certainly hurt January’s job numbers, but in a good way.
Oh, and don’t forget the lost jobs among the injured, dead, and indicted January 6th insurrectionists. And the injuries and deaths among the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol. You should consider the rolling effect of COVID hospitalizations and deaths due to December’s super-spreader holiday and “Stop the Steal” celebrations. Isn’t all of that blood (and job loss) on Trump’s tiny hands?
Bob says
Thanks Joe. it’s just the beginning. High gas prices,inflation,higher interest rates etc.
Pogo says
@The even bigger picture
Ray, well said.
Furthermore, Russia lives or dies by the value of its petro sales. Same for Iran.
To whom it may concern – think.
Steve says
That would be the Stock Market. Too much money chasing too few good and services= Inflation. You can thank the bubble creators for bidding the price of all up Equities Commodities etc. I am currently in PUTS on SP 500 because what goes up comes down and too many talking about what you just mentioned.Or the general Public on how high there 401K values are. Vote and Hedge accordingly. TY It gives me confirmation I am correct.