Another round of $1,400 stimulus checks has been sent, for a total amount of about $391 billion so far.
That also brings the total number of payments to almost 167 million, according to CNBC.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits dropped last week to 406,000, a new pandemic low and more evidence that the job market is strengthening as the virus wanes and economy further reopens.
Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that applications declined 38,000 from 444,000 a week earlier. The number of weekly applications for jobless aid — a rough measure of the pace of layoffs — has fallen by more than half since January.
Far more Americans are receiving unemployment benefits than the last time the jobless rate was at the current 6.1%, thanks to a major expansion of the federal safety net that has provided aid to millions of people out of work.
Yet many businesses and Republican officials say all that jobless aid has contributed to worker shortages in some industries, which is why most GOP-led states are moving to cut off the federal support.
About 15.8 million people received unemployment aid through one of several benefit programs during the week of May 8, the latest period for which data is available, according to a Labor Department report Thursday. That’s nearly eight times as many people as received jobless payments in August 2014, when the unemployment rate was where it is now and roughly the same proportion of adults had jobs.
The primary reason for the expansion is that the government created two emergency programs in last spring’s pandemic relief legislation. About three-quarters of all unemployment beneficiaries — nearly 12 million people — are receiving aid through one of those federal programs. One of them provides payments to the self-employed and gig workers, who had never been eligible for jobless aid before. The other program benefits people who have been unemployed for more than six months. Both are scheduled to end Sept. 6.
Yet 20 states have announced this month that they will cut off the emergency aid early, beginning as soon as June 12, according to an Associated Press analysis, including Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. As a result, about 2.5 million people will lose all their unemployment benefits by early July. Those states are also ending an extra $300 weekly federal payment to the unemployed.
Four other states, including Florida and Arizona, are ending the $300 payment only.
Collectively, those cutoffs of aid coincide with a steady decline in the number of people applying for jobless benefits. The government on Thursday reported the fourth straight weekly drop, to 404,000, the lowest level since the pandemic erupted in March of last year.
The decision by some states to end the aid early highlights the key role the benefits payments have played since the onset of COVID-19. Now, more people — and a higher proportion of the jobless — are receiving unemployment aid than in any past recovery, according to data that extends to the late 1960s. That expansion of aid, economists say, captured millions of people who in previous recessions had fallen through the cracks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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