There were also companies that kept workers on the payroll despite being essentially shutdown for weeks even without access to PPP money.
That may seem obvious to you and I. Hence my question.
> But the unemployment rate would have been massively higher than it was had the government not stepped in with loans (essentially grants) to encourage companies to keep people on the payroll through the lockdowns.
Would it? What models showed that, and how much higher is massively?
> There were also many companies that kept workers employee on the payroll despite being essentially shutdown for weeks.
There were many companies that that stayed open.
I think it seems obvious to everyone, and anyone saying the entire economy was shutdown was just being hyperbolic. Everyone who lived through it knows that they were able to buy groceries and that their power and lights stayed on.
>Would it? What models showed that, and how much higher is massively?
Something like 12 percentage points according to this paper [1].
>There were many companies that that stayed open.
Right. But my point is that unemployment rate isn't everything when discussing what percentage of the economy shutdown. Many people were receiving paychecks despite their company being essentially closed for business.
1. https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/226/Job-Preservation-...
The shutdown was an order of magnitude smaller than the entire economy.
However it also wasn’t an order of magnitude less. According to this WSJ report [1], lockdowns took at least 1/4 of the economy offline.
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-coronavirus-shutdowns-hav...