Photo: ETIENNE LAURENT / EFE
In early January, nearly 9 million Americans said they were not working because they had COVID-19 or were caring for someone with the coronavirus, an amount that triples that reported a month ago, at a time when the Omicron variant of the coronavirus expands throughout the country.
The increase in sick workers is affecting industries ranging from hospitals to airlines, which adds to the country’s labor shortage. The COVID pandemic is affecting many businesses and homes and people are forced to leave work again, as the disease spreads.
About 8.8 million people told the United States Census that they did not work from the 29 from December to 10 in January because they had COVID or were caring for someone with the disease, according to CBS News.
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Another 3.2 million people said they were not working because they were worried contracting or spreading the coronavirus, a 29% more than in early December.
Weekly unemployment claims, a gauge of layoffs, rose last week to their highest level in three months, a sign that the ongoing wave of infection Ions by COVID-19 driven by Omicron is affecting the market
Data on the number of Americans who were not working, compiled by the Census Bureau and cited by CBS News, provide a glimpse in real time of how the increase in COVID cases is affecting the nation’s workforce.
Since the beginning of 2020, the agency has asked people why they are not working, with answers ranging from “I am retired” to “My employer closed due to the pandemic”, to more accurately measure the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy.
The most recent Census analysis reflects the greater number of people who have called their jobs to report sick due to COVID since the survey began .
To put that in perspective, 9 million people make up about 6% of the US workforce
“ Time and time again, we see that this economic recovery is tied to the pandemic and public health measures,” Luke Pardue told CBS News. , an economist at payroll services company Gusto, whose research found service workers in January worked fewer hours each week, compared to a year earlier.
The number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 continued to rise in the first week of January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Omicron represents 98% of the cases in the country, according to that agency.
If there is good news, it is this: some signs suggest that the latest wave of COVID-19 may be declining, including declining infection rates in South Africa, where Omicron was first detected, and in the UK, where the variant quickly became the dominant strain.
Economists believe that jobless claims may decline as soon as the number of COVID cases and infection rates in the United States begin to decline as well. Currently, almost 800,000 New cases are reported in the United States every day.
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