New Jersey’s unemployment rate last month crept up to the highest it’s been since the summer, as total jobless aid comes out to over $20 billion since March and the state faces a dreary winter, marred by a worsening COVID-19 second wave.

The total unemployment rate in November was 10.2%, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Thursday.

It was 8.2% in October and 6.7% in September, after coming down from an all-time record-high of 16.8% in June – the highest it’s been since the federal government began tracking state-level unemployment rates in the 1970s.

All told, 1.86 million New Jerseyans have been out of work at some point since the COVID-19 pandemic crashed into the state in March when Gov. Phil Murphy ordered widespread business closures meant to stop any large gatherings of people where the virus could find new hosts.

Jobless claims at that time surged to 214,836 filings for the first week of April alone.

Compared to now, however, just over 15,000 New Jerseyans filed for unemployment the week ending Dec. 12, compared to 17,000 claims the week before, according to federal labor data released Thursday morning.

The state’s workforce added and filed 485,700 job positions since April, according to the state Labor Department.

New Jerseyans are still faced with the looming prospect of mass business closures, such as the shutdown of indoor dining, amid the second wave. Many more New Jerseyans have simply shown reluctance to venture outside and risk exposure to the virus.

An added $300 a week of federal unemployment relief for up to six weeks – under a program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency – has gone out to hundreds of thousands of jobless claimants.

Another program, known as Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, provides an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits to an estimated 175,000 New Jerseyans, the Labor Department added. The state distributed over $1.1 billion through that program since the first checks went out the week of June.

However, an estimated 487,000 New Jerseyans could see their benefits dry up at the end of the month as the two programs expire on Dec. 26 and if Congress and the White House do not hammer out a new COVID-19 federal relief package, known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.

Lawmakers are prepared to beef up the state’s unemployment coffers should both of those dry up. A bill the state Senate approved Dec. 17 – Senate Bill 3283 – infuses $350 million to cover unemployment benefits between Dec. 22 and Feb. 27, 2021, for anyone whose benefits expire between those dates.

Congress and the White House are facing to pass a new CARES Act, likely coming in at $908 billion. It would likely include additional federal weekly unemployment checks on top of the state benefits, and could be the original $600 a week that expired in July.

Most of the benefits the state gave out were under the federal weekly $600 checks.