United States Non Farm Payrolls

The US economy added a meagre 199K jobs in the last month of 2021, well below market forecasts of 400K. Employment continued to trend up in leisure and hospitality (53K); professional and business services (43K); manufacturing (26K); construction (22K); and in transportation and warehousing (19K). Job growth averaged 537K per month in 2021 and the economy added a record 6.44 million jobs last year. Nonfarm employment has increased by 18.8 million since April 2020 but is still down by 3.6 million, or 2.3 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The impact of the rapid spread of the omicron coronavirus variant on the labour market is still uncertain as the December report covered the first two weeks of the month only, before the worst of the spike that began heading into Christmas.