By The FirstMore bad news for Joe.
The December jobs report wasn’t even close to economists’ predictions. Originally estimated to be in the neighborhood of 400,000 new jobs, Biden managed to hit just 199,000; forget the neighborhood, that’s not even in the same country.
“The figures suggest that despite high demand for workers, businesses are still struggling to attract new employees as factors like a lack of childcare, virus fears and large stimulus savings persevere. The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.9% as the labor shortage persists, despite the lower-than-expected unemployment drop,” Fox News reports.
“Today’s jobs report is a disappointing bookend to a historic year in the job market,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor. “The year ended on a sour note, with job gains slowing even more than in November. New and unpredictable waves of COVID-19 variants threaten to throw the recovery into reverse, showing that we’re still at the mercy of the pandemic.”
