courtneyk/iStockBy CATHERINE THORBECKE, ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. unemployment rate was 6.7% in December — unchanged from the previous month — and employers cut some 140,000 jobs, the Department of Labor said Friday.
“What’s really driving the economy is still the path of the virus,” Erica Groshen, a senior economics adviser at Cornell University and the former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, told ABC News ahead of the report’s release.
Groshen noted that December’s data likely reflects the surge in cases after Thanksgiving and the restrictions put in place to quell its spread.
Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 3.5%.
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