U.S. companies unexpectedly cut jobs in January for the first time in a year, as a surge in the highly contagious omicron coronavirus variant battered the labor market's recovery from the pandemic, according to the ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday morning.
Companies shed 301,000 jobs last month, sharply missing the 207,000-job gain that economists surveyed by Refinitiv had predicted and a major drop from the downwardly revised gain of 776,000 in December. It marked the first time that ADP reported negative growth since December 2020, when companies shed 123,000 jobs before the vaccines were available. --
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