WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, lowering claims to 900,000, still a historically high level that points to further job cuts in a raging pandemic.The Labor Department’s report Thursday underscored that President Joe Biden has inherited an economy that faltered this winter as virus cases spiked, cold weather restricted dining and federal rescue aid expired. The government said that 5.1 million Americans are continuing to receive state jobless benefits, down from 5.2 million in the previous week. That signals that fewer people who are out of work are finding jobs. New viral infections have begun to slow after months of relentless increases, though they remain high and are averaging about 200,000 a day. The number of deaths in the United States from the pandemic that erupted 10 months ago has surpassed 400,000.

Editor’s note: President-elect Joe Biden has said fixing the economy will be one of his administration’s top priorities when he takes office in January. R. Andrew Butters, assistant professor of business economics and public policy at Indiana University and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, explains the challenges Biden will face and what kind of stimulus the U.S. will need.

Editor’s note: The Biden administration has made it clear it wants to inject more money into the U.S. economy and provide more aid for priorities like vaccines, reopening schools and state governments. We asked four economists to share what’s on the top of their wish lists for Biden and Congress, and why.Steven Pressman, Colorado State UniversitySince March, 20,000 U.S. businesses have failed every month, on average. Small companies, which employ nearly half of all workers, have been hit hardest. The U.S. economy will struggle to recover without significant support for small businesses and their workers.

Once president-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20, free college could finally become a reality."With the makeup of this Congress, I am very optimistic that this will be on the agenda," said Morley Winograd, president and CEO of the Campaign for Free College Tuition. "The only person more passionate about this is first lady Jill Biden."On the campaign trail, Biden said he will enact legislation to ensure that students can go to community college for up to two years without having to pay tuition.Biden also adopted a proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for all students whose family incomes are below $125,000 and forgive $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers — thereby slashing the country's $1.6 trillion outstanding student loan tab.

Editor’s note: The Biden administration has made it clear it wants to inject more money into the U.S. economy and provide more aid for priorities like vaccines, reopening schools and state governments. We asked three economists to share what’s on the top of their wish lists for Biden and Congress, and why.Steven Pressman, Colorado State UniversitySince March, 20,000 U.S. businesses have failed every month, on average. Small companies, which employ nearly half of all workers, have been hit hardest. The U.S. economy will struggle to recover without significant support for small businesses and their workers.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate remained stable and on par with the national rate in December, although the labor force and payrolls shrank, according to state figures released Friday.Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate was 6.7%, down one-tenth of a percentage point from November’s adjusted rate of 6.8%, the state Department of Labor and Industry said. The rate shot up from 4.7% just before the pandemic hit to 16.1% in April, Pennsylvania’s highest rate in more than four decades of record-keeping.The national rate was 6.7% in December. In a survey of households, the labor force — a measure of people working or looking for work — shrank by an estimated 15,000 in December, falling below 6.3 million. The number of unemployed and employed both fell. The state hit a record high of almost 6.6 million last February.

President-elect Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion rescue plan is following on Biden's campaign promises of higher minimum wage and more aid for those struggling during the pandemic. Austan Goolsbee, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, joined "Squawk Box" on Tuesday to discuss.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s job market flashed mixed signals in December, with employers adding more people to payrolls and the unemployment rate ticking down even as the labor force shrank.The new figures were released Thursday as Budget Director Kelly Farr told lawmakers that Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration will keep using federal coronavirus aid to cover the cost of state unemployment benefits, aiming to avoid an unemployment tax increase on employers.Georgia’s unemployment rate fell to 5.6% in December from 5.7% in November, ending a volatile year when jobless rates soared from 3.1% in December 2019 to 12.6% in April because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then bounced downward erratically.

CNBC's Eamon Javers reports what we know about the incoming Biden administration's policy goals in order to bring about economic recovery.

On day one, a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden will have to address a devastated economy – much like he and former President Barack Obama did a decade ago. What can the country expect? Forecasting how the economy will perform under a new president is generally a fool’s errand. How much or how little credit the person in the White House deserves for the health of the economy is a matter of debate, and no economist can confidently predict how the president’s policies will play out – if they even go into effect – or what challenges might emerge.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s unemployment rate edged up nearly 1 percentage point last month as the state shed more than 52,000 jobs led by the pandemic-hobbled restaurant and lodging industries, the state’s beleaguered Employment Development Department reported Friday.The jobless rate stands at 9% for December, the state’s first monthly rate increase since April. The leisure and hospitality sector took the biggest hit — down 117,000 jobs — with more than 80% of those in accommodations and food services.“This sector more than any other was impacted by the renewed lockdowns and virus spread,” said Michael Bernick, an attorney with the Duane Morris law firm and a former director of the California Employment Development Department.

People who have been incarcerated face major challenges finding work after their release. About 45% of formerly incarcerated Americans were unemployed one year after leaving prison, according to a multiyear study the Brookings Institution released in 2018. This is far higher than U.S. joblessness levels, even during the coronavirus pandemic. The overall U.S. rate spiked to 14.7% in April 2020, receding to 6.7% by December – nearly twice where it stood at the end of 2019.

Leo* is a 22-year-old living in Edinburgh. He was working part-time in hospitality and waiting to begin university when we spoke during the UK’s nationwide lockdown earlier this year. Like many young people, the pandemic had significantly affected Leo financially. Furloughed and unable to access overtime as he normally would, several months off from his first student loan payment, he was anxiously awaiting a decision on his application for universal credit – without which he would literally have no money for food. He told me:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama’s unemployment rate fell to 3.9% in December, the lowest point since the coronavirus pandemic began ravaging the state’s economy, the state said Friday.The monthly jobless rate declined by one-half percent from November’s rate of 4.4%, according to a statement from the Department of Labor. But the rate was still well above the December 2019 number of 2.7% even with the improvement.Nationally, the unemployment rate remained stuck at a still-high 6.7%. The preliminary, seasonally adjusted state rate represented 87,534 unemployed persons statewide in December compared to 100,374 people the month before.There is still “a lot more work to be done” in restoring the state’s job base, Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington said.

We have been following more than 2,000 Queenslanders from their adolescence into adulthood. The aim of the Our Lives study is to investigate how young people think about their future and how they master their trajectories in a world of rapid change and uncertainty.In 2006, our research team began tracking more than 7,000 students who began high school in Queensland at the age of 13. Since then, the study has become the largest and longest of school leavers in Australia post the global financial crisis. The cohort turns 27 this year.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit Australia in March 2020, the Morrison government took bold and imaginative action. The most notable examples were its income support programs – JobKeeper, paying a A$750 weekly subsidy to employers to keep workers on the payroll, and JobSeeker, which doubled unemployment benefits relative to the Newstart allowance, frozen in real terms for nearly 30 years. These measures were announced as temporary. The government has already begun winding them back as the economy recovers from the worst impacts of the pandemic. On January 1 the JobSeeker supplement (being paid to about 1.3 million Australians) was cut from A$250 to A$150 a fortnight. It will cease in March.

Labour migration is an essential – and potentially beneficial – part of all economies, regions and countries in the 21st century. One of the main reasons for migration is to enjoy better employment and earnings prospects.The usual flow of people is from developing to developed countries at the international level, and domestically from rural to urban areas or from poorer areas to richer ones.In South Africa two provinces – Gauteng and Western Cape – stand out among the full complement of nine – as the most attractive destinations for labour migrants. They contribute most to the economic success of the country, accounting for 49% of the gross domestic product in 2019.

Americans continued to hit the unemployment line in large numbers as the ongoing surge of Covid cases added to America's unemployment problem last week.Jobless claims totaled 900,000 for the week ended Jan. 16, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That was slightly less than the Dow Jones estimate of 925,000 and below the previous week's downwardly revised total of 926,000.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsMarkets reacted little to the news amid continued anticipation that President Joe Biden and Congress will soon deliver another large fiscal infusion to help the economy through the pandemic. Stock futures pointed to a modest gain on Wall Street.Continuing claims showed a slight decrease for the week, falling by 127,000 to 5.05 million.