Evelyn Reynolds

The number of jobs added was below expectations, but otherwise the report shows an economy on the right track.Everything in the November jobs numbers Friday was good except for the number that usually gets the most attention.The 210,000 jobs that U.S. employers added last month was far below analyst expectations. But most of the other evidence in the report points to a job market that is humming. An open question a few months ago — is this a tight labor market or a loose one? — is quickly being settled in favor of “tight.”Most notably, the jobless rate fell to 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent, a remarkable swing in a single month. The speed with which unemployment has gone from a grave crisis to a benign situation is astounding. Unemployment was 6.7 percent last December. In one year, we’ve experienced an improvement that took three and a half years in the last economic cycle (March 2014 to September 2017).Sometimes a falling unemployment rate is driven by a pernicious trend: People drop out of the labor force. The opposite was true in November. The survey of American households on which the data is based showed uniformly positive signs. The number of people working was up by 1.1 million while the number of adults not in the labor force — neither working nor looking for work — fell by 473,000.Among people in their prime working years, those 25 to 54, the share of people employed rose by a whopping half a percentage point. It was 78.8 percent in November, rapidly approaching its pre-Covid level of 80.4 percent. By early in 2022, it’s easy to imagine that people in that age bracket will be employed at prepandemic rates.Even the disappointing number on job creation, derived from a separate survey of employers, has some silver linings. For one, it was accompanied by positive revisions to September and October job growth numbers, amounting to a combined 82,000, which takes some of the sting away. Revisions have been uncommonly large, and mostly in a positive direction, in recent months, reflecting challenges collecting data in a pandemic economy.For another, soft job creation numbers may also be evidence of a tight labor market. Employers may want to add jobs in larger numbers, but are constrained by the number of workers they’re able to find. That story is certainly consistent with many business surveys and anecdotes about labor shortage issues.A tight job market — one in which workers are scarce and employers have to compete to attract workers — is generally the goal of economic policy. Compensation tends to rise, and workers are confident in their ability to find a new job. The new numbers are just the latest evidence that this is the world American workers are living in right now. (Among the other evidence: The rate of people voluntarily quitting their jobs is at record levels.)That’s not to say everything is perfect. The share of adults in the labor force remains significantly below prepandemic levels — 61.8 percent in November, compared with 63.3 percent in February 2020. That reflects in part the decisions of people to retire early. And it remains unclear how many of those people might return to work as the economy and public health conditions improve.But in terms of policy, this increasingly looks like an economy on the right track. The work of macroeconomic stabilization appears to be pretty much complete. At its coming policy meeting, the Federal Reserve will seriously consider winding down its program of bond-buying faster than planned, Chair Jerome Powell said this week.Despite the soft job creation numbers, the overall November employment report appears to support those plans. Fed officials would like to see a stronger rebound in labor force participation, but that measure was at least heading in the right direction in November. And ultimately it isn’t Fed policy that will decide whether, for example, a 62-year-old who left his job during the pandemic decides to start working again.If anything, the new numbers support the idea that the Fed has found itself out of position, with a monetary policy that is looser than it should be at a time when the labor market is quite healthy and with inflation far above its target.Consider this: In the last economic cycle, the Fed began tapering its bond purchases in December 2013, when the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent and inflation was coming in below the Fed’s 2 percent goal. This time, it began when the jobless rate was 4.2 percent and inflation was in the ballpark of 6 percent (November inflation numbers have not yet been released).Even if you believe the Fed was too quick to tighten monetary policy in 2013 — and the sluggish recovery of the 2010s is evidence that it was — the contrast is striking. In that sense, a more aggressive tapering plan from the Fed will be an effort to adjust its policy stance with the facts on the ground without causing too much disruption to markets or the economy.If the Fed succeeds, the economy will keep growing steadily and the labor market will continue its gradual improvement. But it’s worth noting just how rapid the improvement has already been. In February, the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting the unemployment rate would be 5.3 percent in the current quarter. It has ended up a full percentage point below that level.Ultimately, this has been a speedy labor market recovery, and one that appears to have more room to run. Policymakers have every reason to take the win and continue adjusting to that reality. More

November saw disappointing payrolls growth of just 210,000, but that number could be revised substantially higher.
For the first 10 months of 2021, total revisions have added nearly 1 million jobs to the first estimates.
Other labor indicators have shown a strong jobs market.

A construction worker passes a job site at Metropolitan Park, the first phase of new construction of Amazon’s HQ2 development Arlington, Virginia October 13, 2021.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

If you would have believed the Labor Department, August and September looked to be signaling a jobs market that was just about out of gas.
Initial readings from the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that August had seen payrolls growth of just 235,000, while September was stuck at 194,000. Both were well below Wall Street expectations at the time.

But what a difference a couple of months can make.
By the time the BLS was finished with its counting, August had come all the way up to 483,000, more than doubling the initial estimate. September, meanwhile, saw its final revision put at 379,000, nearly doubling the first count.
The BLS issues revisions in the subsequent two months after the initial report.
Such wild changes have been commonplace this year. In fact, revisions from the first estimate to the third and final release have added nearly 1 million jobs to the initial releases — 976,000 to be exact, through October. By contrast, 2019 saw revisions for the entire year total just 101,000 and the pandemic-scarred 2020 saw a net loss of 719,000.

The Labor Department did not immediately return a request for comment on the revisions.

Wall Street took a cautious approach in evaluating what looked like a hugely disappointing performance in November as nonfarm payrolls increased 210,000, well below the 573,000 Dow Jones estimate.
“Although the headline November jobs number was disappointing, the overall report was much better,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Group. “In recent months the BLS has been consistently revising job growth much higher as more complete employer records become available, and the big jump in November employment in the household survey also indicates that an upward revision is likely.”
Indeed, most other labor market indicators have been strongly positive.
Weekly jobless claims, for instance, posted their lowest total since 1969 two weeks ago, and last week’s 222,000 was still more in keeping with what the jobs market looked like prior to the pandemic rather than the strains associated with the period since March 2020.
If the November count keeps pace with the revisions of 2021, the final report should be around 300,000. That would be well below the 11-month year-to-date average of 555,000. However, the past three months have averaged upward revisions of 193,000, meaning that the most recent totals could move considerably higher.

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Nonfarm payrolls increased by 210,000 in November, following a gain of 546,000 the previous month.
The number was well below Wall Street expectations of 573,000.
Despite the big hiring miss, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2%, a 0.4% percentage point decline that came even with rising labor force participation.
Professional and business services and transportation and warehousing led gains, while hiring in leisure and hospitality was sluggish and retail lost jobs despite the traditional holiday hiring season.

The U.S. economy created far fewer jobs than expected in November, in a sign that hiring started to slow even ahead of the new Covid threat, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by just 210,000 for the month, though the unemployment rate fell sharply to 4.2% from 4.6%, even though the labor force participation rate increased for the month to 61.8%, its highest level since March 2020.

The Dow Jones estimate was for 573,000 new jobs and a jobless level of 4.5% for an economy beset by a chronic labor shortage.
A more encompassing measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons dropped even more, tumbling to 7.8% from 8.3%. The household survey painted a brighter picture, with an addition of 1.1 million jobs as the labor force increased by 594,000.
“This report is a tale of two surveys,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at jobs placement site Indeed. “The household survey shows accelerating employment gains, workers returning to the labor force, and low levels of involuntary part-time work. The payroll survey shows a significant deceleration in job growth, particularly in COVID-affected sectors.”
“The underlying momentum of the labor market is still strong, but this month shows more uncertainty than expected,” he added.

Leisure and hospitality, which includes bars, restaurants, hotels and similar businesses, saw a gain of just 23,000 after being a leading job creator for much of the recovery. Though the sector has regained nearly 7 million of the jobs lost at the depths of the pandemic, it remains about 1.3 million below its February 2020 level, with an unemployment rate stuck at 7.5%.

Following the disappointment, markets initially shrugged off the numbers, but then turned negative after the open.
Initial jobs tallies this year have seen substantial revisions, with months showing low counts initially often bumped higher. The October and September estimates were moved up a combined 82,000 in the report released Friday.
Sectors showing the biggest gains in November included professional and business services (90,000), transportation and warehousing (50,000) and construction (31,000). Even with the holiday shopping season approaching, retail saw a decline of 20,000.
Worker wages climbed for the month, rising 0.26% in November and 4.8% from a year ago. Both numbers were slightly below estimates.

Fed ready to change policy

Policymakers have been watching the employment figures closely to gauge how close the economy is to a full recovery from the depths of the pandemic. The U.S. suffered its shortest but steepest recession in the early days of the Covid-19 breakout and has been on a progressive but volatile path since.
Federal Reserve officials put a new wrinkle into the picture this week when they indicated that the measures they instituted to support growth could be coming to an end sooner than expected.
In congressional testimony earlier in the week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said he expects the central bank’s policy committee to discuss at its meeting this month stepping up the level at which it is tapering its monthly bond purchases. Powell said he sees the unwinding to conclude “a few months” sooner than expected, a move that would open the possibility for interest rate hikes.
“The disappointing 210,000 gain in non-farm payrolls in November suggests the labor market recovery was faltering even before the potential impact of the new Omicron variant, possibly as a result of the rising infection rates in the Northeast and Midwest,” wrote Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “Nevertheless, the Fed will still push ahead with its plans to accelerate the pace of its QE taper at this month’s FOMC meeting.”
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly backed up Powell’s comments in remarks Thursday, saying that inflation that is stronger and more durable than expected is creating the need to rethink policy. She said the Fed should “at least, you know, think about raising the interest rate” and accelerating the taper pace.
Daly also hinted that the summary of economic projections to be released this month, in which officials show their expectations for the future, likely will point to interest rate hikes pulled forward into 2022. Markets currently expect the Fed to enact at least two quarter-percentage point increases next year.
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard added to the chorus on Friday, saying the economy as measured by GDP has recovered fully and can operate with less policy stimulus, particularly considering the pace at which inflation is running.
“These considerations suggest, on balance, that the Federal Open Market Committee should remove monetary policy accommodation,” Bullard said.

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The trajectory of the economy as the holidays approach and a tumultuous year nears its conclusion will come into focus Friday morning when the government releases data on hiring and unemployment in November.Economists polled by Bloomberg are looking for a gain of 550,000 jobs, a robust number that suggests economic momentum. In October, employers added 531,000 jobs, and initial claims for unemployment benefits recently touched a 52-year low.The unemployment rate is expected to dip one-tenth of a percentage point, to 4.5 percent.Employment has been helped by the easing of the Delta variant of the coronavirus in many places and increased hiring at bars and restaurants as well as stores, offices and factories. The emergence of the Omicron variant threatens some of those gains, but it is too soon to gauge the risk to the economy.“We should continue to see strong jobs growth because demand for labor is red hot, but there is a lid on potential acceleration as the pandemic is still going on,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at the career site Glassdoor.He expects the report to show formidable hiring in retailing, transportation and warehousing with companies staffing up in anticipation of holiday demand.Despite the tight labor market and the healthy recent hiring number, the economy remains roughly four million jobs short of prepandemic levels. About one-third of those positions are in the leisure and hospitality sector, which is vulnerable if the Omicron variant turns out to be as much of a threat as the Delta variant, constraining travel and gatherings.“That’s the risk, but it probably won’t show up before Christmas,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco. “It could be an issue in the new year. We’re still dealing with the Covid pandemic, and the risks are there for the economy and hiring.”The economy’s path has been characterized by clashing signals throughout the fall.The “quits rate” — a measurement of workers leaving jobs as a share of overall employment — has been at or near record highs, evidence of confidence among workers that they can navigate the labor market and find something better. But the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment dropped to levels not seen since the sluggish recovery from the recession of 2007-9.The report noted “the growing belief among consumers that no effective policies have yet been developed to reduce the damage from surging inflation.” Shoppers are facing the steepest inflation in 31 years. In October, prices increased 6.2 percent from a year earlier.Nonetheless, markets have remained relatively calm. The major stock indexes are up by impressive levels this year. And bond yields, which tend to move higher in inflationary environments, remain near record lows, indicating that investors don’t see inflation as a longer-term threat to the economy or financial stability. More

Economists expect the economy was strong in November, with employers adding 573,000 nonfarm payrolls, according to Dow Jones.
Investors will be watching the employment data, released Friday morning, with an eye on how the Federal Reserve will interpret it when it meets in mid-December.
Wages were expected to continue rising at a rapid pace in November, gaining 5% year-over-year, according to Dow Jones.

A worker moves boxes of goods to be scanned and sent to delivery trucks during operations on Cyber Monday at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, November 29, 2021.
Mike Segar | Reuters

Job growth is expected to have been strong in November, and employers likely continued to boost wages to attract and retain workers in an incredibly tight labor market.
Economists expect 573,000 jobs were created last month, up from 531,000 in October, according to Dow Jones. The unemployment rate is expected to have declined to 4.5% from 4.6%, and average hourly wages are expected to have increased by 0.4% on a monthly basis, or 5% year over year.

“It looks like it was a really good month, and we’ll see if we can sustain it, with some pullback, which is natural with concerns about omicron,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “But at the moment, we’re still coming off what was an incredible month, especially for travel and tourism.”
The jobs data, expected Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, will be an important input for the Federal Reserve at its Dec. 14 and 15 meeting. Earlier this week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank could speed up the tapering of its $120 billion a month bond-buying program, which it put in place to prop up the economy during the pandemic. The Fed will discuss the acceleration at its December meeting, he said.

The Fed’s dual mandate

Full employment is one of the Fed’s dual mandates, so economists will be closely watching the participation rate in the November report to see if it rises. This metric is the percentage of the eligible workforce that is employed or actively seeking work, and it was 61.6% in October.
Swonk expects an above-consensus 750,000 jobs were added in November, and she expects the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%. Swonk said wage growth should be solid, as employers attempt to attract workers in the face of demand from Amazon and other employers that have raised wages.
“It’s a hot job market and there’s a surge in demand that’s like nothing we’ve ever seen,” she said. She noted that job openings are up 55% from the February 2020 level, according to the online jobs site Indeed.

“There’s no immigration. It’s fallen off a cliff. The pandemic has accelerated retirements and hurt participation among some groups that normally need to participate the most,” she said. “It’s far from perfect. It’s a job market that has a collision of demand surging with constraints on supply.”
Wage gains were likely across the board in November. “We’ll see gains on the low end, but the higher end, professional services, is really hot,” Swonk said.

Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, expects 300,000 jobs were created in November, based on private sector data and the weekly unemployment claims data.
He expects the hiring trend is strong and will remain so.
“Our expectation is 500,000 jobs per month on average over 12 months going forward, but there’s going to be fluctuations, with the virus and ups and downs of different industries,” said Tilley.

Greater context behind the jobs report

Tilley said the Fed will be looking for the reasons behind the jobs report’s weakness or strength, as it tries to assess what will be normal for the labor market post-pandemic. “If it’s weak because there’s still no labor supply, that’s very different for them than weakness because demand is petering out,” he said. “I think the Fed, the FOMC, is probably spending more time getting their arms around what does a full recovery of the labor market mean.”
He said the Fed will have to adjust to a lower participation rate. “That has implications for the unemployment rate and should we even be comparing it to the pre-pandemic unemployment rate,” he said.
But the jobs report will also be judged by investors, with an eye on what it means for Fed policy. Financial markets have been sensitive to any nuances that could help determine the central bank’s timeline on completing its bond-buying program, which now is expected to end in June 2022.
Once the bond purchases end, the door would be open for the Fed to raise interest rate hikes.
Swonk has been expecting the Fed to speed up the tapering of its bond purchases because of higher than expected inflation, so the wage portion of the employment report will also be very important. “We’re not getting a wage price spiral…but that is what the Fed is worried we could get to,” she said.
David Petrosinelli, senior trader at InspereX, said the jobs report will not likely have a big impact on the market unless it is very strong or very weak.
“I think this market is much more cued up for a stronger number, and that tells me rates have some room to run,” he said. Petrosinelli pointed to the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, at 1.44% Thursday afternoon. Yields move opposite price.
“You can look back to last week and that was 1.70%,” he said, referring to the 10-year yield. “I think that was the upper bound there. If you get a really strong number, we could go right back there, albeit bounded by the sideshow of this new variant.”
Yields moved sharply lower after initial reports of the omicron variant of Covid last Friday.

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Members of the United Automobile Workers union have voted decisively to change the way they choose their president and other top leaders, opting to select them through a direct vote rather than a vote of delegates to a convention, as the union has done for decades.The votes on the election reform proposal were cast in a referendum open to the union’s roughly one million current workers and retirees and due by Monday morning. About 143,000 members cast ballots, and with 84 percent of the vote counted on Wednesday night, a direct-election approach was favored by 63 percent, according to a court-appointed independent monitor of the union.The referendum was required by a consent decree approved this year between the union and the Justice Department, which had spent years prosecuting a series of corruption scandals involving the embezzlement of union funds by top officials and illegal payoffs to union officials from the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.More than 15 people were convicted as a result of the investigations, including two recent U.A.W. presidents.Reformers within the U.A.W. have long backed the one member, one vote approach, arguing that it would lead to greater accountability, reducing corruption and forcing leaders to negotiate stronger contracts. A group called Unite All Workers for Democracy helped organize fellow members to support the change in the referendum.“The membership of our great union has made clear that they want to change the direction of the U.A.W. and return to our glory days of fighting for our members,” said Chris Budnick, a U.A.W. member at a Ford Motor plant in Louisville, Ky., who serves as recording secretary for the reform group, in a statement Wednesday evening. “I am so proud of the U.A.W. membership and their willingness to step up and vote for change.”David Witwer, an expert on union corruption at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, said the experience of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which shifted from voting through convention delegates to direct election in 1991, after an anti-racketeering lawsuit by federal prosecutors, supported the reformers’ claims.Dr. Witwer said the delegate system allowed seemingly corrupt union leaders to stay in power because of the leverage they had over convention delegates, who were typically local union officials whom top leaders could reward or punish.“Shifting the national union election process from convention delegates to membership direct voting was pivotal in changing the Teamsters,” he said by email.At the U.A.W., leadership positions have been dominated for decades by members of the so-called Administration Caucus, a kind of political party within the union whose power the delegate system enabled.Some longtime U.A.W. officials credit the caucus with helping to elevate women and Black people to leadership positions earlier than the union’s membership would have directly elected them.But the caucus could be deeply insular. The Justice Department contended in court filings that Gary Jones, a former U.A.W. president who was sentenced to prison this year for embezzling union funds, used some of the money to “curry favor” with his predecessor, Dennis Williams, while serving on the union’s board.Union officials have said Mr. Williams, who was recently sentenced to prison as well, later backed Mr. Jones to succeed him, helping to ensure Mr. Jones’s ascent. More

Jobless claims for the week ended Nov. 27 totaled 222,000 vs. the Dow Jones estimate of 240,000.
That was higher than the 194,000 from the previous week, which was the lowest total since 1969.
Continuing claims dropped below 2 million for the first time since the early days of the pandemic.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance rose last week but held at levels consistent with how the job market looked before the Covid-19 pandemic devastated the U.S. employment picture, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
First-time filings for the week ended Nov. 27 totaled 222,000, less than the 240,000 Wall Street expected. That was higher than the 194,000 from the previous week, but that total, the lowest since 1969, was revised even further down from the initial 199,000 reported.

The totals are the product of heavy seasonal adjustments, though the unadjusted number was actually lower, at 211,896.
The report comes amid signs of an increasingly tight labor market, with workers leaving their positions for new jobs at the highest level on record and with hiring persisting at a brisk pace.
In addition to the brightened outlook for initial claims, continuing claims fell by another 107,000 and are now below 2 million for the first time since the early days of the pandemic. The last time continuing claims, which run a week behind the headline number, were lower than the current 1.96 million was March 14, 2020.

Virginia and Texas combined to see more than 15,000 fewer claims filed for the week, according to unadjusted data.
Thursday’s report comes a day ahead of the closely watched nonfarm payrolls count from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That tally is expected to show an addition of 573,000 new jobs in November, following a gain of 531,000 in October. The unemployment rate is expected to edge lower to 4.5%.
Correction: Jobless claims for the previous week were initially reported as 199,000. An earlier version misstated the figure.

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The latest zigzag in the pandemic has already curtailed travel, but its broader impact on growth and inflation isn’t likely to be known for several weeks.LONDON — This week, Marisha Wallace finally had to admit that her planned five-day ski holiday in Switzerland in mid-December was not salvageable: The Swiss government’s sudden decision to impose a 10-day quarantine on some international travelers meant she wouldn’t be able to leave her hotel or return home to London on her scheduled flight.“It’s the way of the world right now,” said Ms. Wallace, an actress and a singer. “You can’t plan anymore.”That provisional state, amplified across the world, has left the still-fragile economy in a state of suspense as spiking coronavirus infections and the new variant Omicron have popped up around the globe.“There’s no way to know how bad it will get,” said Ángel Talavera, head of European economics at Oxford Economics.The forecasting firm has sketched out three scenarios, including one that predicts no discernible effect on economic growth and one severe enough to slash next year’s in half. It will take several weeks before there is more clarity, Oxford concluded.The current round of restrictions has already reduced travel and dampened consumer confidence. A virulent, vaccine-resistant strain could send the economy into a tailspin again, while a mild one could leave health care systems unburdened and allow the recovery to get back on track.As a report released Wednesday from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed, although growth has been uneven, the world economy this year bounced back more quickly and strongly than had been anticipated. The report, compiled largely before the latest coronavirus news, nevertheless warned that growth was projected to slow: in the eurozone, to 4.3 percent next year from 5.2 percent in 2021; and in the United States, to 3.7 percent in 2022 from 5.6 percent.The organization characterized its outlook as “cautiously optimistic.” But it reiterated how much economic fortunes are inextricably tied to the coronavirus: “The economic policy priority is to get people vaccinated,” the report concluded.Travelers from South Africa being tested at the Amsterdam airport on Tuesday.Remko De Waal/Anp/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIndeed, Omicron’s threat to the recovery is just the latest in a series of zigzags that the world economy has endured since the coronavirus began its march across continents last year. Hopes that an ebbing pandemic would permit daily life and commerce to return to normal have been repeatedly frustrated by the virus.Even before this latest variant was discovered, a fourth wave of infections transformed Europe into a Covid hot spot and prompted new restrictions like lockdowns in the Netherlands and Austria.During earlier outbreaks, trillions in government assistance helped quickly resuscitate the struggling U.S. and European economies. It also brought some unexpected side effects. Combined with pent-up demand, that support helped produce a shortage of labor and materials and rising inflation.Given how much debt was racked up in the past 18 months, such aid is unlikely to recur even with a sharp downturn — and neither are wholesale closures. Vaccines provide some protection, and many people say they are unwilling to go back into hibernation.People and business alike have shifted into a wait-and-see mode. “A lot of things do seem like they are on hold, like labor market or overall consumption decisions,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research for the job site Indeed.How that will affect unemployment levels and inflation rates is unclear. Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, indicated on Tuesday that concern about stubborn inflation was growing. The O.E.C.D. also warned that inflation could be higher and last longer than originally anticipated.Omicron’s appearance just adds to the uncertainty, Laurence Boone, the organization’s chief economist, said in an interview.The Nativity Hotel in Bethlehem. Israel on Sunday decided to close its borders to foreign tourists after the Omicron variant was detected.Hazem Bader/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“If it’s something we can cope with, like the virus we have so far, then it may prolong disruptions of the supply chain, and inflation could take longer to sort out,” she said. But if the new variant causes wider shutdowns and plunging confidence, she added, it could reduce the spending binge and dampen rising prices.In recent days, governments have reacted with a confusing hodgepodge of stern warnings, travel bans, mask mandates and testing rules that further cloud the economic outlook. That patchwork response combined with people’s varying tolerance for risk means that, at least in the short term, the virus’s latest swerves will have a vastly different effect depending on where you are and what you do.In France, Luna Park, an annual one-month amusement fair held in the southern city of Nice and slated to open this weekend, was called off after the government suddenly requisitioned the massive warehouse where roller coasters, shooting galleries and merry-go-rounds were being set up in order to convert the space to an emergency vaccination center.“Today I find myself trying to save my company, and I’m not sure that I can,” said Serge Paillon, park’s owner. He feared he would face huge losses, including 500,000 euros (about $566,000) he had already invested in the event, as well as refunds for tickets that had been on sale for several monthsMr. Paillon furloughed 20 employees. Another 200 festival workers who were coming from around the country to manage the 60 games and rides were told to stay home.“For a year and a half, it was already a disaster,” Mr. Paillon said. “And now it’s starting again.”Israel’s decision on Saturday to shut its borders to all foreign tourists for two weeks is likely to reduce the number of tourists in Israel and the occupied territories this December by up to 40,000, or nearly 60 percent of what was expected, according to a government estimate.Wiatt F. Bowers had to cancel his trip to Tel Aviv, the fifth time in 18 months he has had to scrap a planned trip to Israel.Agnes Lopez for The New York TimesWiatt F. Bowers, an urban planner, had planned to leave Jacksonville, Fla., for Tel Aviv on Wednesday but had to cancel — the fifth time in 18 months that he had to scrap a planned trip to Israel. He will rebook, but doesn’t know when.Foreign tourism, which brought a record 4.55 million tourists to Israel in 2019, had already nearly vanished. Between March 2020 and September 2021, nonresident foreigners were barred from entering Israel — and, by extension, the occupied territories, where entry and exit are controlled by Israel.In Bethlehem, where tourism is the main industry, income consequently fell more than 50 percent, said the mayor, Anton Salman, in a phone interview.Elias al-Arja, the chief of the Arab Hotel Association, which represents about 100 Palestinian hotels in the occupied territories, said he was concerned less about the short-term effect of the sudden travel ban than about the long-term message of unpredictability it sent to potential visitors.“The disaster isn’t the groups who canceled over the next two weeks,” Mr. al-Arja said. “How can I convince people to come to the Holy Land after we promised them that you can come, but then the government closes the border?”Reluctance to travel, though, could mean an upswing in other sectors if the new variant is not as harmful as people fear. Jessica Moulton, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company in London, said previous spending patterns during the pandemic showed that some money people would otherwise use for travel would instead be spent on dining.She estimated that the roughly $40 billion that British consumers saved on travel last summer was used for shopping and eating out.At the moment, Ms. Moulton said, “to the extent that Omicron decreases travel, which will happen as we head into Christmas, that will benefit restaurants.”Even before the latest variant was discovered, a fourth wave of infections transformed Europe into a Covid hot spot and prompted new restrictions like lockdowns in Amsterdam.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn Switzerland, where travelers from Britain and 22 other countries must now quarantine, the effect of the policy change on hotels was immediate.“The majority of travelers from England — between 80 to 90 percent — have already canceled,” said Andreas Züllig, head of HotellerieSuisse, the Swiss hotel association.Ms. Wallace, who canceled her trip to the Cambrian Hotel in Adelboden, was one of several people who changed their reservations at the hotel after the Swiss government made its announcement on Friday, just one week before the slopes open.“This obviously has an impact on our very important winter and Christmas business,” said Anke Lock, the Cambrian’s manager, who estimated that 20 percent of the hotel’s December bookings were at risk.For now, though, most guests are watching and waiting, Ms. Lock said: “We’ve changed the bookings from guaranteed to tentative.”Extreme uncertainty about the economy may turn out to be the only certainty.Patrick Kingsley More