The White House is bracing for a bad January jobs report, repeatedly tamping down expectations ahead of Friday’s release. Officials warn Omicron will likely skew hiring results since nearly 9 million people called out sick the week the data was collected, according to a Census survey.
The reference week for January’s jobs report was taken Jan. 9 through Jan. 15, the same week Omicron cases peaked in the U.S., according to CDC data.
The way the labor count works: hourly workers who have to stay home sick without paid leave are not counted as employed, even if they haven’t been laid off, according to the labor department.
General economist consensus is that the U.S. economy added about 150,000 jobs in January, which, if accurate, would still be the weakest jobs report since December 2020.
But some economists and the White House are warning the numbers could actually be in the negative.
“We just wanted to kind of prepare people to understand how the data is taken, what they’re looking at, and what it is an assessment of,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Monday. “And as a result, the month’s jobs report may show job losses in large part because workers were out sick from Omicron…the week where the data was taken.”
January’s jobs report will be released Friday morning.
