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The COVID-19 Omicron variant’s spread among U.S. factory workers is slowing operations and stretching staff for manufacturers, leading some to consider unconventional, and sometimes expensive, solutions to keep operating, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mounting absences among COVID-infected workers are bringing masks back to some factory floors, executives said, while manufacturers shuttle available workers to jobs and plants where they are most needed. Companies are also redoubling recruiting efforts to fortify workforces already worn thin by high turnover in a tight job market. The speed at which the highly contagious variant is spreading has stunned some executives, who said they had grown increasingly confident over recent months that their companies had navigated the worst of the pandemic. The apparent decreasing severity of the variant is providing some hope that the number of cases will lighten and the effect on companies will abate in coming weeks. Some sidelined workers are quarantining at home as a precaution. Meanwhile, with demand booming for manufactured goods from automobiles to medical equipment, executives said that idling production now isn’t an option. Manufacturers mostly have maintained operations since the start of the pandemic, in part because many operate in what are deemed essential industries. The surge in COVID-19 absenteeism threatens to deepen problems of supply-chain and transportation bottlenecks and delayed deliveries. A stretch of depleted workforces and lower production volumes also could fuel further cost increases and drive consumer inflation. Already, domestically made material input costs for manufacturers have grown at the fastest rate since the 1970s, up nearly 30% in November from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Staffing shortages helped push an Iowa chain of nursing homes into bankruptcy as health-care providers continue to struggle with pandemic pressures, Bloomberg News reported. QHC Facilities LLC filed for bankruptcy last week, citing “crippling staffing and employee retention issues” in a court filing. The Clive, Iowa-based company operates eight skilled nursing facilities and two assisted living homes with a total of about 750 beds in the state and 300 workers. Occupancy rates plunged as COVID-19 spread through nursing homes, which accounted for a large proportion of deaths early in the pandemic. At the same time, the health-care sector has suffered from mass resignations as workers face burnout and seek more lucrative employment, contributing to swelling gaps in coverage. The chain was grappling with other problems ahead of the bankruptcy. It’s faced years of fines for substandard patient care, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch. One of its facilities was damaged in a strong storm in 2020 and still hasn’t been rebuilt. The death of the company’s co-founder in June “had a devastating impact” on the business, his spouse and Chief Executive Officer Nancy Voyna said in the filing, leaving unmet obligations including a $4 million state fee.

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over efforts to overturn two major Biden Administration policies designed to raise coronavirus vaccination rates: its vaccine-or-testing mandate aimed at large employers and a vaccination requirement for some health care workers, the New York Times reported. The hearing comes as the country is facing a surge in COVID cases and the White House wrestles with how to manage this phase of the pandemic. It could be the “most important day for public health in a century,” according to Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown. It boils down to whether the federal government has the authority to impose these mandates, a question the Supreme Court has not yet considered in other challenges. The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration says it has the power via a 1970 law that allows it to issue emergency rules for workplace safety. Opponents, which include some states, trade groups and companies, say that the mandates should be left to legislation, not executive action. The court’s six-justice conservative majority may be skeptical of broad assertions of executive power. The last time the Supreme Court considered a Biden administration policy addressing the pandemic — a moratorium on evictions — the justices shut it down. A decision in favor of the mandate would mean that, by Jan. 10, large companies must have policies in place that require employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly. They must be following those policies by Feb. 9.

The U.S. job market is nearly at levels healthy enough that the central bank’s low-interest rate policies are no longer needed, Federal Reserve officials concluded last month, according to minutes of the meeting released yesterday, the Associated Press reported. Fed officials also expressed concerns that surging inflation was spreading into more areas of the economy and would last longer than they previously expected, the minutes said. “Many (policymakers) saw the U.S. economy making rapid progress” toward the Fed’s goal of “maximum employment,” the minutes said. “Several” officials said they felt the goal had already been reached. The minutes underscored the Fed’s sharp pivot from what had been its policy through most of the pandemic, shifting from keeping interest rates very low to encourage more hiring, to moving quickly towards raising rates to rein in inflation, which has surged to four-decade highs. Fed officials also voiced heightened concerns about inflation, a development that pushed down stock prices after the minutes were released. Bond yields also rose in response. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for setting rates on mortgages and many other kinds of loans, increased to 1.7% soon after the minutes were released, from 1.68% just before.

U.S. businesses added 807,000 jobs in December despite the emergence of the omicron variant, according to data released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP, far exceeding expectations, The Hill reported. The ADP National Employment Report, a closely watched gauge of private sector job growth, showed private non-farm payrolls adding almost twice as many new workers as analysts projected. Private sector job growth was spread broadly among businesses of all sizes and industries, said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. “December’s job market strengthened as the fallout from the delta variant faded and omicron’s impact had yet to be seen,” Richardson said in a statement. “Job gains were broad-based, as goods producers added the strongest reading of the year, while service providers dominated growth. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees added 204,000 workers last month, while mid-sized firms added 214,000 new workers and companies with more than 500 employees added 389,000 new workers to payrolls. Good-producing businesses added 138,000 jobs while service sector firms added 669,000. The leisure and hospitality sector, which is deeply vulnerable to COVID-19 shocks, also added 246,000 jobs last month despite the omicron surge.

Growth in U.S. manufacturing slowed in December to an 11-month low with companies still combating supply chain problems, the Associated Press reported. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, reported Tuesday that its index of manufacturing activity fell to a reading of 58.7 in December, 2.4 percentage points below the November reading of 61.1. Any reading above 50 indicates growth in the manufacturing sector which has recorded 19 straight months of growth going back to the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit. The December reading was the lowest since a matching 58.7 in January 2021. The slowdown in December reflected a decline in both new orders and in production. While the December performance still reflected strength in manufacturing, there were concerns that the current global surge in COVID-19 cases, largely the highly infectious omicron variant, could further depress manufacturing in coming months.

A record 4.5 million American workers quit their jobs in November, a sign of confidence and more evidence that the U.S. job market is bouncing back strongly from last year’s coronavirus recession, the Associated Press reported. The Labor Department also reported Tuesday that employers posted 10.6 million job openings in November, down from 11.1 million in October but still high by historical standards. Employers hired 6.7 million people in November, up from 6.5 million in October, the Labor Department reported Tuesday in its monthly Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Nick Bunker, research director at the Indeed Hiring Lab, noted that quits were high in the low-wage hotel and restaurant industries. “Lots of quits means stronger worker bargaining power which will likely feed into strong wage gains,″ he said. “Wage growth was very strong in 2021, and ... we might see more of the same in 2022.″ Still, the Labor Department collected the numbers before COVID-19′s omicron variant had spread widely in the United States. “While each successive wave of the pandemic caused less economic damage, there is still a risk to the labor market from the current surge of cases,″ Bunker said. The job market is rebounding from last year’s brief but intense coronavirus recession. When COVID hit, governments ordered lockdowns, consumers stayed home and many businesses closed or cut hours. Employers slashed more than 22 million jobs in March and April 2020, and the unemployment rate rocketed to 14.8%.