White House braces for bad Omicron jobs numbers

The big picture: Vast numbers of Americans missed work this month due to the Omicron variant, and that is likely to drag down January jobs numbers. But the White House believes these effects will be temporary.

  • In a winter of economic discontent, the good news has been that the job market has been booming. The virus surge undermined that in January.

The details: Jobs numbers are based on how many people are working during a “survey reference week” that is generally the calendar week that includes the 12th of the month. This month, that was Jan. 9 to Jan. 15.

  • Covid cases peaked in precisely that span, with the highest seven-day average case count coming on January 15, according to the CDC.

https://www.axios.com/omicron-jobs-biden-0b402e0d-db75-4790-ad44-fdaeb00fda6f.html