U.S.’s $795 Billion Rescue Saved Jobs. No One’s Sure How Many

It’s been a lifeline for millions of U.S. small businesses during the pandemic, or a bloated bureaucratic nightmare, depending who you ask -- and maybe a bit of both.

The U.S. government’s sprawling Paycheck Protection Program officially wraps up its 13-month existence on Monday. Economists will be studying PPP for far longer than it was operating to figure out how many jobs it saved.

One of the most cited studies, led by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor, pegged the jobs saved by PPP’s first round at a fairly low 2.3 million -- at a high cost ...