Economic Indicators | Coronavirus

News from EPI Recovery continues to wane: Expiring unemployment relief means more trouble around the corner

Job growth slowed dramatically in November as nonfarm payrolls increased by only 245,000. Holiday hiring didn’t pick up enough to make up for other factors dragging down job growth, and for the fifth month in a row, job gains waned with notable losses in retail hiring on a seasonally adjusted basis. The expiration of vital pandemic unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on December 26 will leave 12 million workers without a safety net, and over 4 million others will have already exhausted their benefits by this cutoff. This spells trouble not only for workers and their families who are desperately trying to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table—especially with the eviction moratorium also set to expire on December 31—but also for the recovery itself. It didn’t have to be this way. If the suite of UI programs were reinstated and extended through 2021, workers would not lose that valuable safety net and it would spur the creation of 5.1 million more jobs in 2021.

The unemployment rate edged down to 6.7%, but for the “wrong” reasons as 400,000 people left the labor force. The number of workers unemployed 27 weeks or more—the long-term unemployed—shot up to 3.9 million in November. Now, over one-third (36.9%) of the total unemployed are long-term unemployed.

The recovery continues to wane because of the removal of important relief measures as well as the fact that the “easy” gains from workers on temporary layoffs continue to dwindle (temporary layoffs fell by 441,000 in November). Stark disparities remain in the labor market with the Black unemployment rate (10.3%) still higher than the peak of the overall unemployment rate in the Great Recession (10.0%) while white unemployment is now at 5.9%.

Public-sector employment continued to decline for the third month in a row. State and local employment remains 1.3 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level. Most of these losses are in education employment (which is down 1.0 million jobs since February). In addition to reinstating and extending the vital pandemic UI programs and other protections in the CARES Act (e.g. health measures, paid sick leave, eviction moratorium), relief and recovery efforts need to include aid to state and local governments, which face revenue shortfalls and costly forced austerity without federal assistance.

Jobs day

Monthly change in payroll employment, January 2020–August 2023

Date Change in Employment
Jan-2020 334
Feb-2020 273
Mar-2020 -1427
Apr-2020 -20514
May-2020 2625
Jun-2020 4565
Jul-2020 1444
Aug-2020 1735
Sep-2020 961
Oct-2020 719
Nov-2020 264
Dec-2020 -268
Jan-2021 494
Feb-2021 575
Mar-2021 784
Apr-2021 286
May-2021 482
Jun-2021 693
Jul-2021 769
Aug-2021 663
Sep-2021 557
Oct-2021 781
Nov-2021 614
Dec-2021 569
Jan-2022 364
Feb-2022 904
Mar-2022 414
Apr-2022 254
May-2022 364
Jun-2022 370
Jul-2022 568
Aug-2022 352
Sep-2022 350
Oct-2022 324
Nov-2022 290
Dec-2022 239
Jan-2023 472
Feb-2023 248
Mar-2023 217
Apr-2023 217
May-2023 281
Jun-2023 105
Jul-2023 157
Aug-2023 187
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Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Statistics public data series.

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See related work on Unemployment | Jobs and Unemployment | Coronavirus

See more work by Elise Gould