Business can balance PPP loan forgiveness and worker benefits

May 29, 2020

Ford School public policy and economics professor Betsey Stevenson sees a way for business owners who got a forgivable federal loan to avoid the choice between getting a loan discharged or allowing workers to collect enhanced unemployment benefits. 

In an article on CNBC on May 28, she noted that work-sharing programs offer a way for business owners to recall employees to satisfy Paycheck Protection Program rules without jeopardizing expanded unemployment benefits, according to labor experts. Some workers even stand to get higher pay.

“There’s a lot of federal money floating around,” she said. “And a savvy business can make them and their workers better off.”

For the full article, click here.

Betsey Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a visiting associate professor of economics at the University of Sydney, a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a fellow of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, and serves on the executive committee of the American Economic Association. She served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015 where she advised President Obama on social policy, labor market, and trade issues. She served as the chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011, advising the Secretary of Labor on labor policy and participating as the secretary's deputy to the White House economic team.