About 11.6 million people received jobless aid
from two federal programs in the week that
ended Dec. 26, the latest period for which data
is available. One of those programs provides
extended benefits to people who have
exhausted their state aid. The other supplies
benefits to self-employed and contract workers.
Those two programs had expired near the end
of December. They were belatedly renewed,
through mid-March, in the $900 billion rescue
aid package that Congress approved and
President Donald Trump signed into law. That
legislation also included $600 relief checks for
most adults and a supplemental unemployment
benefit payment of $300 a week. Congressional
Democrats favor boosting the checks to $2,000
and extending federal aid beyond March, as
does President-elect Joe Biden.
The U.S. job market’s weakness was made
painfully clear in the December employment
report that the government issued last week.
Employers shed jobs for the first time since
April as the pandemic tightened its grip on
consumers and businesses.
The figures also depicted a sharply uneven job
market: The losses last month were concentrated
among restaurants, bars, hotels and
entertainment venues — places that provide
in-person services that some governments
have restricted or that consumers are avoiding.
Educational services, mostly colleges and
universities, also cut workers in December. So
did film and music studios.
Most other large industries, though, reported
job gains. Many economists had expected
last spring that job losses would spread to