Call it another casualty of COVID-19: rent collections have fallen 3.4% year-over-year in December 2020, according to National Multifamily Housing Council data.

The NMHC's Rent Payment Tracker, which surveys 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartments across the country, found that 89.8% of apartment households made either a full or partial rent payment by December 20. That's 393,952 fewer households than the share who paid rent by that date in 2019. NMHC data shows that 90.3 percent of households paid rent by November 20, 2020.

Payments have slid more year-over-year in December than in April through November, underscoring the struggle of many American households to make ends meet. The U.S. economy added 245,000 jobs in November, falling far short of economists' predictions, according to data released earlier this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate remains considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels at 6.7%: 10.7 million Americans remain unemployed, and the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 385,000 to 3.9 million.