(Reuters] – While the number of Americans looking for employment in November was down, it remained above 1 million.

This survey period shows a month when coronavirus cases rose once again after a drop in the number of new infections in October. The economic policymakers are trying to figure out what’s keeping people off the edge and when they anticipate them returning to the workforce.

While the number of COVID-19-afflicted people declined from 1.29million to 1.19 million in the previous month, it was still a significant drop since then. However, this is not sufficient to reduce intense competition among firms for workers due to labor shortages.

Figures are drawn from an ongoing household survey by the U.S. government, which has been part of the monthly jobs reports since the start of the pandemic.

The U.S. saw a decline in job growth overall, probably because millions of Americans were still unemployed despite the fact that companies increased wages and generous benefits for jobless people expiring, schools reopening fully, and so on.

The Federal Reserve could be in trouble if it decides to accelerate the end of its bond purchasing program at its next policy gathering on December 14-15. This is to help rein in the 31-year high inflation.

Peter Cardillo from Spartan Capital Securities, New York said: “It is a market that is healing but at an uneven rate.”

For people who work, COVID’s impact continued to decline. The survey found that approximately 3.64million people couldn’t work in November, or they reported working fewer hours as a result of their businesses closing down or being cut short. That is down roughly from the 3.83million in the preceding month.

From 18.05 million October, the number of people who claimed they teleworked due to pandemics fell to 17.5 million last month.