Another 1.2 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 730,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 451,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

The 1.2 million who applied for UI last week was a decrease of 172,000 from the prior week, reversing last week’s increase of 164,000. The four-week moving average of total initial claims was roughly unchanged (a slight decline of 8,500).

Last week was the 49th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week were roughly the same as the ninth-worst week of the Great Recession.)

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for February 6). Continuing claims are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago.

The 11-week extensions of Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and PUA passed in December just kick the can down the road—they are not long enough. Congress must pass further extensions well before mid-March, or millions will exhaust benefits at that time, when the virus is still rampant and the labor market is still weak. It is already probably unlikely that gaps in payments can be avoided in many places even if Congress wraps up the next round of COVID-19 relief as soon as possible, due to processing times. In the debates around the COVID relief package, some have expressed concern that the proposed $1.9 trillion relief and recovery plan is too big. These concerns are misplaced. The full $1.9 trillion in relief and recovery is crucial.