A record-setting spike in coronavirus cases wasn’t enough to derail the job market recovery at the beginning of the year.
U.S. employers added 467,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said on Friday. That showed the resilience of the recovery in the face of a resurgent pandemic. The January data was collected in the first weeks of the year, when coronavirus cases topped 800,000 a day and millions of workers were kept home by positive tests, suspected exposures or child care disruptions. That led many economists — and even the White House — to set expectations for a weak report.
Instead, employers continued to add jobs at nearly the rate they did in December, when payrolls grew by more than half a million. That number was revised up from earlier estimates.
“Clearly something is different about this surge,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist for the career site ZipRecruiter. Job seekers remain optimistic, she said, and companies that have been struggling to recruit workers aren’t pulling back on hiring just because cases shot up for a few weeks. The Labor Department counted 10.9 million job openings at the end of December — just a touch off recent record levels.
“Employers who have been engaged in this dogfight for talent, they’re not standing down,” she said. “They are sticking around because they think the surge will be over soon.”
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