Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, emergency Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs helped keep the economy afloat and provided a critical lifeline for millions of Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Emergency UI programs, which were created under the CARES Act in March 2020, were designed to stabilize both the economy and households by replacing enough of unemployed workers’ lost income so they could continue to put food on the table, remain stably housed and pay their bills. By helping more unemployed people make ends meet, emergency UI spending supported local businesses and helped stabilize the whole economy during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The American Rescue Plan and bipartisan emergency measures played a significant role in lowering the poverty rate in 2021, successfully alleviating hardship during an unprecedented national crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Recent analysis by the Urban Institute found that these bills, combined with existing benefit programs, reduced the projected poverty rate in 2021 by two-thirds and kept an estimated 50 million Americans out of poverty.

Families used the first round of monthly CTC payments to pay for necessities such as food, school expenses and child care. Data from the Census Bureau show that following the first round of monthly CTC payments, the number of households that reported having trouble paying for usual household expenses declined by 2.5 percentage points. Similarly, the number of households with children reporting that they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat dropped by 2.6 percentage points. The data provide further evidence that the expanded CTC is helping families recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and providing a boon to communities, generating nearly $19.3 billion in spending in local economies each month.