Nearly 9 million Americans have called in sick to their employer, saying they have COVID-19 or are caring for someone who has the virus, CBS News reports. This is three times the number from just a month ago and represents 6% of the U.S. workforce.

In addition, 3.2 million people say they are not working because they are afraid they could contract COVID-19 or pass it along to someone else, a 25% increase from December.

The number of people looking for jobs jumped last week to their highest number in three months, 286,000, possibly a sign that some of them have lost their jobs due to the virus affecting their employer, CBS says.

Pandemic Holds the Keys

"Time and time again, we see that this economic recovery is tied to the pandemic and public health issues," Luke Pardue, an economist at Gusto, a payroll services company, tells CBS. He adds that his data shows that service workers in January worked fewer hours than a year ago.

Omicron now accounts for 98% of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, acording to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention.

Experts told CBS that if Americans remain sidelined from their jobs due to the virus, this could affect other businesses, such as retail stores, restaurants and bars. In addition, employers in these and other service industries will be more inclined to cut their workers' hours.

In New York, for instance, service workers are not working a 40-hour, but a 21-hour week, according to Gusto.

Then there are the tens of thousands of airline flights cancelled due to airline workers calling in sick with COVID-19. Delta reported that 8,000, or 10%, of its workers came down with COVID in the past four weeks.

On the bright side, infection rates from the omicron variant of COVID-19 appear to have peaked in Africa and the U.K., and may do the same in the United States.