BAD JOB

U.S. Adds Paltry 194,000 Jobs in September as Delta Wave Subsides

The unemployment rate also decreased to 4.8 percent.

Even as the Delta variant begins to subside in the U.S., the country’s September job numbers reflect the devastation it caused. The U.S. added 194,000 jobs last month, down from almost 370,000 jobs in August, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate went down from 5.2 percent to 4.8 percent, though that was partly a result of people no longer looking for work. “Employment is slowing when it should be picking up because we’re still on the course set by the virus,” Diane Swonk, chief economist for the accounting firm Grant Thornton, told The New York Times. One of the worst hit industries was leisure and hospitality, which continued to stagger after being the leading job creator in the months prior to the Delta surge.