(PresidentialHill.com)- On Wednesday, payroll processing firm ADP reported that companies cut jobs in January for the first time in more than a year. However, on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 467,000 jobs in January.
ADP reported that private payrolls fell by 301,000 for the month of January, which is far below the Dow Jones estimate for growth of 200,000 jobs.
According to ADP, the leisure and hospitality industry reported a drop of 154,000 jobs. Trade, transportation, and utilities cut 62,000. The “other services” category declined by 23,000. Manufacturing lost 21,000 jobs while education and health services declined by 15,000. Construction also fell by 10,000.
But on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its January numbers showing the economy added 467,000 jobs. This figure was vastly higher than the projected 150,000 added jobs experts had predicted.
According to BLS, restaurants and bars made up a large chunk of the jobs gains restoring more than 100,000 positions. But retail, logistics, and business services also increased.
The US is still in the midst of a labor shortage. As of December, the country had 10.9 million job openings.
January wasn’t all good news, however. Panicking employers’ fear over the Omicron variant resulted in a 15.4 percent increase in the number of employees working from home. A total of 6 million people said they were either working fewer hours in January or not at all because employers were closing or losing business due to the Omicron panic.
The number of people who have been jobless for more than five weeks also increased in January.
As a result, the unemployment rate inched up to 4 percent, making it the first increase since June 2021. At the same time, the labor force participation rate did rise slightly in January to 62.2 percent from 61.9 percent in December. However, the labor participation rate is still below the pre-pandemic levels.
In 2021, the economy recovered 6.6 million jobs lost during the pandemic lockdowns. However, the US is still nearly 3 million jobs shy of where we were pre-pandemic.
