Employers across the country added a disappointing 199,000 people to their payrolls in December, closing out a pandemic-marred year in which the U.S. economy nonetheless gained some 6.5 million jobs and saw a dramatic drop in unemployment, the government reported Friday.
But the jobs number was less than half of what analysts were expecting for December. The Labor Department collected data in the middle of last month as the Delta variant was receding and the Omicron wave was starting to rise. So the full force of the latter may yet deal a blow to the labor market, limiting hiring and keeping workers on the sidelines in the immediate future.
By the end of 2022, economists expect the country to have recovered all of the 22 million jobs lost during the initial pandemic shock in 2020, with the unemployment rate falling back to 3.5% — a prospect unimaginable a year ago.