The country fell far short of job expectations for the months of September. The Labor Department reported that the country only added 194,000 jobs.

The Hill reports:

The unemployment rate fell sharply in September to 4.8 percent, a decline of 0.4 percentage points. But employment growth fell sharply for the second consecutive month after a staggering rise in coronavirus cases began in late July.

Economists expected the U.S. to add roughly 500,000 jobs last month and see a much smaller decline in the unemployment rate. The U.S. added 366,000 jobs in August, according to revised numbers released Friday, after the country added more than 1 million jobs in July before the emergence of the delta variant.

“This is quite a deflating report,” wrote Nick Bunker, research director at Indeed.

“The hope was that August was an anomaly but the fact is, the Delta variant was still with us in September. One optimistic interpretation is that COVID-19 case counts are receding, so future months should be stronger. But the reality is that we are still in a pandemic,” he continued.