EXPLAINER: 5 key takeaways from the December jobs report

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the fastest years of job creation in U.S. history stumbled at the finish line in December.

Hobbled by shortages of workers and persistent threats from the coronavirus, America's employers added just 199,000 jobs last month — the lowest monthly haul since December 2020 and only about half the total that economists had envisioned.

The news was hardly all bleak. The unemployment rate dropped to a pandemic low of 3.9%. Wages rose. More people said they were employed in December compared with November. And the government revised up its estimate of job growth in October and November by a combined 141,000.

The pandemic has taken the job market on a wild ride. As COVID-19 slammed the United States in March 2020, governments ordered lockdowns and families hunkered down at home as a health precaution. Business closed or reduced hours. Employers laid off tens of millions of workers.

But vast infusions of government stimulus — and, eventually, the rollout of vaccines — revived the economy with unexpected speed. Employers added 6.4 million jobs last year, the most in Labor Department records going back eight decades. On a percentage basis, hiring was up 4.5% last year, the most since 1978.

“The pace of recovery overall in the job market has been remarkable,’’ said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Still, the economy has yet to recover from the disastrous loss of 9.4 million jobs — also a record — in 2020. It remains about 3.6 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level.

And hiring slowed sharply this fall. December’s disappointing job gain was calculated came before a surge in COVID cases linked to the omicron variant, suggesting that things could at least temporarily get worse beginning this month.

Here are five...