Who actually benefited from the business bailout program?

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Small businesses in communities of color were left behind by the Paycheck Protection Program.
Photo credit: James Bernal for Reveal

Hi Revealer,

A lot of us got rightly obsessed with data this year. How many COVID-19 cases? Up or down? How many people have we lost?

More recently, how many vaccine shots in how many arms?

We've been digging into another trove of data – the $525 billion spent on the government's business bailout program in 2020. We uncovered patterns that show who got that money and who got left out: Businesses in majority-White communities received loans from the Paycheck Protection Program at a higher rate than businesses in majority-Latinx, Black and Asian communities. The disparities were especially glaring in large metro areas.

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And for all you number nerds, here's why we love data. We went back and forth on different ways to analyze the PPP loan data. (It was a denominator thing.) We realized we just had to run all the options and see what happened. Amazingly, no matter how we sliced it, the pattern of racial inequities stayed the same: That's truth in numbers.

Our episode and article about the Paycheck Protection Program cap a year of uncovering the economic, emotional and societal effects of the great unequalizer, COVID-19. We do this work to hold powerful corporate interests and government agencies accountable. Our investigative reporting consistently contributes to real-world impact, from civil and criminal investigations to new laws and policies, better-informed conversations and community-driven solutions.

Please show your support for investigative journalism by donating today. With a $50 donation, you’ll receive a copy of In/Vulnerable, our comic book that captures both the shared experience of the pandemic and the ways it has laid bare the stark disparities that shape our lives.

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As a nonprofit, our bottom line is the public interest. We have the courage, freedom and independence to dedicate our entire newsroom to this work because of support from foundations, individual donors, and readers and listeners like you.

Thank you for supporting Reveal.

Emily Harris
Senior Reporter and Producer

Mohamed Al Elew
Data Reporter

The Center for Investigative Reporting

1400 65th St., Suite 200

Emeryville, CA 94608

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