Last month, U.S. employers might have shed jobs for the first time in about a year, potentially raising alarms about the economy’s trajectory.

The increase of just 49,000 positions in January made scarcely any dent in the nearly 10 million jobs that remain lost since the virus intensified nearly a year ago. The tepid increase followed a decline of 227,000 jobs in December, the first loss since April. Most of the drop in unemployment occurred because some people out of work found jobs, but others stopped looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed. And without an increase of 80,000 temporary jobs, the economy would have posted a net loss for January. Still, more than 4 million Americans have lost jobs and stopped looking for work since the pandemic began.