Restaurant recovery’s screeching halt

• What we learned from Friday’s jobs report: There’s a Delta variant speed bump.

By the numbers: The 42,000 jobs shed at restaurants and bars last month helped offset the gains elsewhere in the leisure and hospitality sector.

The intrigue: For the first time since the Great Reopening revved up, the sector may have a supply problem stemming from more than just worker shortages.

• Businesses “paused hiring in the face of weaker [customer] demand and uncertainty about the future while workers withdrew due to health concerns,” Bank of America economists wrote Friday.

The backdrop: OpenTable’s restaurant reservations are a near real-time indicator of dining out demand.

• “We see a pronounced decline in late July and August,” OpenTable CEO Debby Soo told the Los Angeles Times.

What to watch: “[T]he rise of the Delta variant delaying return to office plans and weighing on social activity. Could be a long Fall...,” economist Julia Coronado tweeted in part.