Fewer Americans stay out of work as a result of COVID, Reuters poll shows

(Reuters) – The number of Americans who have not sought employment in the past four weeks fell in the COVID-19 pandemic in November, but remained at more than one million people, a Labor Department poll showed on Friday.

The timing of the survey reflects a month when koronavirus cases rose again in October after a drop in new infections. Economic policy is about keeping people on the sidelines and hoping that they will eventually return to work.

The number of people who said they were not looking for work for fear of COVID-19 fell to 1.19 million from 1.29 million last month, the lowest number since the start of the pandemic, but not enough for companies to freshen up the intense job competition.

The figures come from an additional household survey by the U.S. government along with the monthly jobs report since the pandemic began.

Overall, U.S. job growth grew much less than expected in November, probably because millions of unemployed Americans stayed at home, as companies raised wages, generous unemployment benefits expired, and schools reopened completely.

It could be a headache for the Federal Reserve to decide whether to speed up the end of its bond-buying program at its next policy meeting on Dec. 14-15 to raise interest rates earlier next year. 31 years of peak inflation.

“It’s a market that’s healing but it’s healing on an irregular level,” said Peter Cardillo, head of market economics at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

For those in the workplace, the impact of COVID continued to decline. According to the survey, 3.64 million people were unable to work in November or reported a reduction in hours due to the complete closure of their business or reduced operations, down from around 3.83 million in the previous month.

The number of people who said they had recently done teleworking due to the pandemic fell to 17.5 million in the last month from 18.05 million in October.