DENVER (KDVR) — Help is on the way from the federal government, after news broke late Sunday that Democrats and Republicans agreed on a roughly $900 billion stimulus bill to help the economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.

But that help may be too late for restaurants across Colorado who decided to close their doors permanently with crippling restrictions on how they operate.

“We’ve grown to be tight knit, and this is honestly one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever worked at,” said Maureen Hogan, one of the managers at Blake Street Tavern.

The tavern’s owner made the call to close it’s doors at the beginning of the new year, until indoor dining can resume. Workers like Hogan are now left on furlough, and will have to decide between filing for unemployment or finding a new job.

“I’ve got bills to pay you know? And unemployment is kind of slower now,” Hogan said. “It’s stressful, it’s hard because you still got to worry about like having a place to live, like paying for food.”

A recent Colorado Restaurant Association survey says the industry has shed nearly one third of its jobs, an estimated 63,450 employees.

Almost eight of every 10 restaurants surveyed said their staff was smaller than last year, and one in four restaurants are considering shutting down permanently within the next month with indoor dining shut down once more.

And several restaurants have not been able to even survive this long.

“It unfortunately closed my restaurant down permanently,” said Cliff Seal, who used to work at the Palm Steakhouse in the lobby of the Westin Hotel in downtown Denver.

Seal has been in the industry for decades, but has been on unemployment since March. While he says he didn’t have any major issues getting on unemployment, his extended benefits just ran dry.

He’s been trying to find a job in the industry for months, but they seem non-existent.

“It’s the first time it’s ever happened to me in my entire life,” Seal said. “I have traveled around our great country, getting to live in different places and never having to worry about finding a job.”

Now he’s forced to go outside the industry, and will start job training for home building and construction in January.

The federal relief package includes $600 in stimulus checks, $300 in extended unemployment insurance, and replenishing the Paycheck Protection Program by $280 billion. But for people like Seal, who desperately want to return to the industry he loves, the relief comes after the clock has run out.

“It’s too little too late,” Seal said. “I mean we send them there to do a job for us. We give them the power to make these decisions, and both sides have sat around and done nothing because it was an election year.”