[norwen]

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21st Century Business Herald reporter Hu Huiyin reports that the omicron mutation is wreaking havoc on the U.S. job market.According to the latest data released by the US Census Bureau on January 24, in just 13 days between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, about 12 million Americans across the US were directly affected by the pandemic and were unable to work. The figures come from the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, which began in mid-2020, and the latest figures are the highest since the program began. Another 3.2 million Americans are unable to work for fear of getting infected or infecting others, according to the same survey.
The US labor market has been under severe pressure in recent months due to
concerns over the epidemic, with the number of job vacancies remaining high and the number of resignations hitting new highs. Compared with pre-pandemic figures, the total number of employed people in the US was 152 million at the end of 2019 and 149 million at the end of 2021, with labor-intensive industries taking the brunt.Faced with the contradiction between
the shortage of labor force and the rising demand for jobs, all walks of life in the United States are simultaneously expanding their automation business. For example, some retail giants have added automatic warehousing, and supermarkets are responsible for delivery by robots, so as to alleviate the problem of low efficiency of enterprises.
However, the trend towards automation in the industry inevitably raises concerns. MIT economist Daron Acemoglu has found that the use of robots in employment has a significant negative impact on employment. But on the other hand, he noted that the impact of robotics in the United States varies widely by industry and region, and could play a significant role in exacerbating income inequality.

"The use of robots during the pandemic, from an initial point of view, will widen the gap between the rich and the poor in the private sector," Yang Shuiqing, an assistant researcher at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told 21st Century Business Herald that the impact is due to the fact that these robots are more likely to take the jobs of low-skilled front-line workers and replace those at the bottom.