A record 9 million Americans are out sick as COVID rates surge
CBSN
As the Omicron variant rips across the U.S., in early January almost 9 million Americans said they were not working because they had COVID-19 or were caring for someone with the virus — triple the number from a month ago. The surge in sick workers is impacting industries ranging from hospitals to airlines, adding to the nation's labor crunch.
The "great American sickout," as some have called it, is taking a toll on many businesses and households, with people again forced to scale back work as the disease spreads. Weekly jobless claims, an indicator of layoffs, jumped last week to their highest level in three months, a sign the ongoing wave in COVID-19 infections driven by Omicron is hitting the job market.
The data on the number of sidelined Americans, collected by the Census Bureau, provides the first real-time look at how the spike in COVID cases is affecting the nation's workforce. Since early 2020, the agency has asked people why they aren't working — with answers ranging from "I'm retired" to "My employer shut down due to the pandemic" — to more precisely gauge the pandemic's effects on the economy.
