“The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided loans to help businesses maintain their payroll, hire staff and cover costs during the COVID-19 pandemic was “poorly targeted” and that most of the funds didn’t go to workers, according to a study released this week.
The study, conducted by economist David Autor and others, found that only about one-quarter of the funds from the PPP went towards supporting jobs that would have disappeared during the pandemic, according to a breakdown of the research written by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
It also found that benefits within the $800 billion program “flowed disproportionately to wealthier households rather than to the rank-and-file workers that its funds were intended to reach.”‘