COVID relief: There’s still some help to be had

When COVID -19 first started making headlines in February 2020, U.S. unemployment was only 3.8%, one of the lowest percentages seen since World War II. By April, it had climbed to 14.4%, and the hardest hit were low-income service workers, people who couldn’t do their jobs on a Zoom call. Expanded and extended unemployment benefits helped such workers survive. So did moratoriums on evictions and increases in aid programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).

Stimulus checks and an expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) with advanced payments also put dollars directly into peoples’ wallets, so much so that the child pover