MOLINE, Ill. — There are more than 10.4 million job openings across the nation, but employers are still struggling to find workers and because of that - they have no reason to create new jobs.
In November, the economy added 210,000 new jobs - the lowest monthly job gain so far this year and 335,000 fewer jobs than forecasted. Over the past 8 months, a combined 907,000 fewer jobs have been added to the economy than projected.
GMQC Financial Expert Mark Grywacheski from the Quad Cities Investment Group explained two reasons for this during "Your Money with Mark" on Monday, Dec. 6. It all comes down to the COVID-19 pandemic:
"The first [reason] are these vaccine mandates which could potentially force millions of unvaccinated workers out of their job and the second is the state of the pandemic. We just know so little about this new Omicron variant. But if we do see a sudden surge in cases like we did last summer with the Delta strain, even if Omicron turns out to be a mild form of the virus, does it impact a worker's willingness to stay in the labor market? But also would it trigger a return of business closures and mass lay-offs? Even if there's not a broad federal mandate, do many states start to pull-back on crowd gatherings or place additional restrictions on certain businesses?"
The omicron variant is also keeping investors on a rollercoaster ride. To see what Mark said about the stock market and if there's going to be a large, sustain pullback - watch the video above for our full interview.