The economy added only 49,000 jobs in January, after losing a revised 227,000 jobs in December. This pace is far below the rate necessary to pull us out of the pandemic jobs deficit—there are about 10 million fewer jobs now relative to February.

Today’s employment situation release is yet another reminder that our economy remains in a hole worse than the depths of the Great Recession and needs additional relief. This month’s data gives us a sense of the scale of relief necessary and the economic costs of inaction.

Leisure and hospitality remains by far the worst hit industry, having lost 61,000 jobs in January on top of a downwardly revised 536,000 jobs in December, for a total of almost 4 million jobs lost since February 2020.

Some industries, like motion picture and sound recording and performing arts and spectator sports have been particularly hard hit, down around 40 percent since February

On the other hand, employment in couriers & messengers, building material & garden supply stores, and warehousing & storage are all up since February 2020

Scientific research and development is another industry where employment has risen since February 2020

The labor force participation rate ticked down to 61.4 percent. It was over 63 percent in February 2020.

The unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent. The current unemployment rate partly reflects some misclassification issues and also lower labor force participation since February 2020.

The headline unemployment number obscures wide variation across workers. Workers of color have been more likely to lose their jobs than White workers.

In January, the unemployment rate for Black workers was 9.2 percent and was 8.6 percent for Hispanic workers, compared to 5.7 percent for White workers and 6.6 percent for Asian workers. The unemployment rate for Asian workers jumped suddenly in January to 6.6 percent.

Long-term unemployment has risen, reflecting the duration of the economic crisis and the fact that the virus was uncontained during most of 2020. Almost 40 percent of workers in January were unemployed for 27 weeks or more, and over half were unemployed for 15 weeks or more.

The employment rate (or employment-population ratio) among women age 25 to 54 is down 4.1 percentage points (2.6 million women) since February 2020, compared to a decrease of 3.9 percentage points (2.3 million men) among men.

While temporary layoffs were high earlier in the pandemic, they have come down and more workers now say they are permanently unemployed than say they are on temporary layoff

Around 6 million workers now say they are working part-time but would prefer full-time work, about 3.7 percent of the labor force

This morning's job report shows that the pace of job gains has slowed sharply in recent months as the pandemic continues to weight on job creation, especially in face-to-face services.

Strong relief is urgently and quickly needed to control the virus, get vaccine shots in arms, and finally launch a robust, equitable, and racially inclusive recovery