(Bloomberg) — The White House is lowering expectations for this week’s U.S. jobs report, saying that brief absences of workers due to omicron could overstate the number of unemployed people for last month.

Several White House officials have teed up Friday’s report with warnings, saying that the week when surveys were taken for the January payroll numbers was the height of illness absences in the aftermath of the holidays.

Brian Deese, the director of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, said the numbers could be “confusing” as Covid illnesses are recorded as job losses.

“We expect that that will have an impact on the numbers,” Deese told MSNBC on Tuesday. “We never put too much weight on any individual month; this will particularly be true in this month, because of the likely effect of the short-term absences from omicron.”

Biden has repeatedly used employment data to show a solid economic rebound. To counter the criticisms over high inflation, he highlighted the falling jobless rate. Friday’s report may still show historically low unemployment, which is based on a separate survey from the one for payrolls and counts temporary, unpaid sick leave differently.

Prepare for Ground

Marty Walsh, Labor Secretary and Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary have warned that January’s official jobs gains may not be as good as expected.

If a worker was out “and did not receive paid leave, they are counted as having lost their job,” Psaki said Monday. She said that nearly 9 million workers missed work because of illness during January when data was being collected. 

“So we just wanted to kind of prepare, you know, people to understand how the data is taken,” she said. “As a result, the month’s jobs report may show job losses in large part because workers were out sick from omicron.”

According to Economists, January will see nonfarm payrolls rise 150,000 — which would be the weakest reading since late 2020. According to Bloomberg’s median forecast, the U.S. unemployment rate will remain unchanged at 3.9%.

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