Nearly 47K Mass. small businesses receiving $10B in now-dry SBA bailout program
Photo | Grant Welker
O'Connor's Restaurant & Bar in Worcester has closed temporarily because of the pandemic.
Nearly 47,000 small Massachusetts businesses have received or are in line to receive $10.4 billion through a now-defunct federal aid program to help them through coronavirus pandemic-related closures and drops in revenue.
That tally, released by the U.S. Small Business Administration on Friday, puts Massachusetts ninth nationally in both the number of businesses awarded and the amount its businesses received from the Paycheck Protection Program, the small-business component of the $2-trillion federal CARES Act. Nationally, nearly 1.7 small businesses have received $342 billion through Thursday.
The largest share of funds, nearly 24%, were for loans between $350,000 and $1 million, according to the SBA. Another 17% are loans of less than $150,000, and 9% are for loans of more than $5 million. The program provides loans of up to $10 million to businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees with a portion eligible for forgiveness if businesses use the money to keep people employed.
Construction companies have been the largest recipient nationally at more than 13% of funding awards. That's followed by professional, scientific and technical services at nearly 13%, manufacturing at 12%, health care and social assistance at nearly 12%, accommodation and food services at less than 9% and retail with less than 9%.
The federal government stopped taking applications for the PPP late Wednesday once funding was used up. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Jovita Carranza urged in a statement for Congress to authorize more money to help small businesses relying on the program to survive during the sharp economic downturn.
The crowdsourcing website COVID Loan Tracker, which relies on input from thousands of businesses filing out a survey nationally, said 5.8% of PPP applicants have received funding through Friday.
Businesses have been laying off workers in record numbers in the past month.
More than 103,000 Massachusetts workers filed for unemployment last week and nearly 5 million nationally, according to new figures released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor. Nearly 572,000 Massachusetts workers have filed for unemployment in the last four weeks, or about 16% of the state's non-farm workforce of around 3.6 million.
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