U.S. President Joe Biden arrives to speak on the January work report at the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, February 4, 2022.
Leah Millis | Reuters
WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy has finally come out of the strong ups and downs of Covid, President Joe Biden said on Friday, citing unexpectedly large jobs in January.
The president also cited upward revisions to November and December employment data that showed the economy remained strong throughout a spike in Covid cases.
“Our country is taking advantage of everything Covid has to throw at us, and we’ve come back stronger,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 467,000 on the month, while the unemployment rate edged higher to 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bigger-than-expected gains come a week after White House warning that the numbers may be low due to the pandemic.
Along with the big surprise in January, the major revisions sent the previous month were significantly higher.
December, which was initially reported to be up 199,000, rose to 510,000. November rose to 647,000 from 249,000 previously reported. In just two months, the original number was revised upwards by 709,000.
Those changes brought the 2021 total to 6.665 million, easily the largest single-year increase in US history as bosses rehired workers they had laid off during their worst times of the year. epidemic.
“If you can’t remember another year with so many people coming to work in this country, that’s why,” Biden said. “It never happened.”
Taken together, the combined figures for January and the revisions for the previous two months suggest that the record-breaking omicron wave had almost no impact on the economy as the delta wave of Covid did. last summer and fall.
In January, the biggest job gains came from the leisure and hospitality sectors, with 151,000 people employed, 108,000 of which came from bars and restaurants. This is further evidence that omicrons, which are more contagious but often lead to milder illness than other strains of Covid, have not stopped people from going out to crowded indoor locations.
Opposite, Last August, the National Restaurant Association established that nearly one in five Americans stopped going to restaurants as cases of delta variant increased.
Wages also rose in January as average hourly earnings for workers across the economy rose 0.7 percent month-on-month and 5.7 percent year-over-year, both the fastest rates since 2020. The White House in recent months heralded the pay hike as evidence of better bargaining power among workers and evidence that corporate boards are moving toward paying employees fairer.
Some economists and Wall Street traders say they are closely watching the wage statistics as a potential leading indicator of inflation. Labor is almost always the No. 1 cost facing companies, so higher wages could lead to steeper retail price hikes across the economy if companies look to offset the burden. pay.
The wages and employment numbers also support the Federal Reserve’s plan to start raising interest rates and continue to roll back its easy money policies from the Covid-19 era. The central bank is expected to begin a cycle of rate hikes starting in March that could eventually drive up the cost of auto and home loans.
– Jeff Cox of CNBC contributed reporting on this story.
