Economists are bracing for the surge in cases to further disrupt job growth in January and in the coming months, though it is too soon to say how it will affect the labor market in the longer term.
The seesawing employment situation underscores the economy’s continued susceptibility to the pandemic, nearly two years on.
Some schools have returned to remote learning, or are threatening to, leaving many working parents in limbo.
While the economy has improved, millions of people have also left the labor market since the pandemic began and are not counted in the official unemployment rate.
A record number of Americans quit their jobs in November, as intense competition, especially in lower-wage sectors, has presented workers with opportunities to demand and seek out higher wages and better working conditions.
Economic policymakers at the Fed are aware that many workers are still missing from the labor force, but they have increasingly signaled that they will not wait for them to return to remove help for the economy.
Officials have signaled that they could raise interest rates several times this year in a bid to slow spending and cool off a fast-growing economy, and economists think those moves could start as soon as this spring.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of some internal conflict between hiking and full employment,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S.
Inflation has jumped around the world as the pandemic disrupted supply chains, labor markets and the availability of goods.
But analysts say there are small signs inflation is turning a corner.
Still, energy prices are set to remain volatile this winter amid dwindling stockpiles of natural gas and concerns about supply from Russia.
Once energy prices are stripped out, December’s inflation rate rose 2.8 percent from a year earlier, as the prices of food and industrial goods increased.
“In the near term, eurozone inflation is set to decline,” Salomon Fiedler, an economist at Berenberg bank wrote in a note to clients.
The hearing comes as the country is facing a surge in coronavirus cases and the White House wrestles with how to manage this phase of the pandemic.
The last time the Supreme Court considered a Biden administration policy addressing the pandemic — a moratorium on evictions — the justices shut it down.
A decision in favor of the mandate would mean that, by Monday, large companies must have policies in place that require employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly.
If the court rules against the government, then that would effectively end the federal mandate, though the administration could pursue the regular rule-making process.
Airlines are at odds with the European Union over rules that require them to use their takeoff and landing slots at airports, even when they don’t have enough passengers to justify flights.
In recent weeks, several European carriers, including Lufthansa and Brussels Airlines, have said they need to cancel thousands of fights because they are not booked enough to be profitable.
The rules, which normally require airlines to use at least 80 percent of their allocated slots at airports, were waived in early 2020 as the coronavirus hit the continent.
commissioner for transport, acknowledged concerns about the Omicron variant, but said the move was aimed at helping airlines return to capacity by the summer.
Carsten Spohr, chief executive of the Lufthansa Group, said his company had to cancel 33,000 flights, roughly 10 percent of those scheduled for the winter season.
“The pandemic has hit us all hard.
Richard H.
The transaction drew an outcry from lawmakers and watchdog groups because it put Mr. Clarida in a position to benefit as the Fed restored market confidence.
27 transaction as a previously planned move by Mr. Clarida away from bonds and into stocks, the type of “rebalancing” investors often do when they want to take on more risk and earn higher returns over time.
Google infringed on audio technology patents held by the speaker manufacturer Sonos and it is not allowed to import products that violate Sonos’s intellectual property into the United States, a trade court ruled on Thursday.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, has been sued over the 2020 killing of a federal security guard, a move that aims to challenge a federal statute that shields websites and social media platforms from liability for what users post.
The New York Times Company has reached an agreement to buy The Athletic, the online sports news outlet with 1.2 million subscriptions, in an all-cash deal valued at $550 million.