The pandemic relief records archive

The money moved.
The record remains.

Federal agencies obligated $2.423 trillion from the COVID-19 relief laws: school and state-and-local funds, small-business loans and grants, airline payroll support. The answers come from court filings, agency reports and program data.

Try:PPP fees Employee Retention Credit Unemployment

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78,601Documents 1.1MPages of records 16.5MRows of data 611Profiles 34Interactives 21Statute references

Question 01 / Where the money went

How much money was spent, and where did it go?

$2.423Tobligated from COVID-19 relief appropriations, across 529 programs

The Small Business Administration obligated the most of the 28 agencies, $928.91 billion, ahead of the Treasury ($485.63 billion) and Health and Human Services ($328.77 billion). Unemployment benefits went out through 53 state agencies; the federal weekly supplement alone came to $442 billion by May 2023.

Paycheck Protection Program$811.58B
Education Stabilization Fund$277.09B
State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds$242.72B
Coronavirus Relief Fund$149.84B
Pandemic Relief for Aviation Workers$58.88B
Restaurant Revitalization Fund$28.53B

Six selected programs of the 529, not the six largest, by dollars obligated.

Figures: federal agencies by COVID-19 dollars obligated and pandemic programs by dollars obligated (PRAC funding table, downloaded 18 September 2026); the unemployment insurance guide.

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Pandemic programs by dollars obligated

The 25 largest of 529 programs, with the agency that ran each and what it paid out.

Open the ranking

Question 02 / What it did

What effect did the money have?

83%of ERC refunds, about $235 billion, went out from 2022 through June 2025 (GAO)

23–34%of PPP dollars went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs (Autor et al., 2022)

The Employee Retention Credit paid employers for keeping workers in 2020 and 2021. Most of its refunds arrived, GAO found, "well after unemployment had returned to its pre-pandemic level". For PPP, Autor and co-authors estimate 2 to 3 million job-years preserved over 14 months, at $170,000 to $257,000 each. The venue grants paid $14.6 billion, more than a year after PPP.

Figures: the ERC guide; what studies say about PPP outcomes, 82 findings from 40 documents; the venue-grant comparison.

Closed storefronts and masked pedestrians in New York during the pandemic

Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress · 2020–21

Main Street was shut. The money moved online.

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What studies say about PPP outcomes

Jobs kept, cost per job, who got the money and which firms survived, each finding with its study, period and caveat.

Read the findings

Question 03 / What it cost

How much did the aid cost in fees, waste and fraud?

$100–135Bin unemployment insurance fraud, by GAO's estimate (Sept 2023)

$44.6Bexpected cost of COVID EIDL on the government's books, 12¢ on the dollar

The IRS warned in 2023 that an ERC promoter "can collect a contingency fee of up to 25% of the ERC refund".

Potential fraud in PPP and COVID EIDLSBA Inspector General · June 2023>$200B
PPP lender processing fees, modeledSBA fee schedules · both rounds$38.24B
Losses charged in criminal casesJustice Department · to Dec 31, 2023>$2B
ERC improper payments the IRS expected its disallowance letters to preventIRS · Aug 2024up to $5B

Each figure has its own scope and date. They are not added together. Figures: build your own fraud number, the COVID EIDL explorer, PPP lenders by estimated fees, the ERC guide.

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Build your own pandemic-fraud number

Pick the programs and the bar (flagged, likely or charged) and see each official estimate beside its definition and date.

Build the number

Question 04 / What it teaches

Based on what was done, what lessons can be learned?

100×COVID EIDL's potential-fraud rate, per the SBA Inspector General, against the venue grants' rate, per SBA's own estimate (33% vs 0.33%)

Two-thirds of PPP dollars were approved before the SBA expanded fraud screening in January 2021, and the CARES Act let the SBA approve disaster loans without a tax return. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance relied heavily on self-certification in its first phase.

3.7MPPP and EIDL recipients flagged by GAO, against 937 federal benefits-fraud sentencings (all programs) in fiscal 2024 1 in 8classified relief-fraud cases carry identity-theft indicators (a lower bound) 2 desksThe IRS can recover the ERC through the tax return; PPP and EIDL recovery runs through the SBA and the Justice Department

GAO says its flags need further review; a flag is not a conviction. Figures: the venue-grant comparison, PPP fraud by year and draw, verified by fax, PUA Was Built to Be Uncheckable.

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How pandemic-relief fraud worked

Seven playbooks across PPP, EIDL, unemployment and the ERC, the check each one got past, and the adjudicated case behind it.

Read the playbooks

Question 05 / The people

Who put in the work? Who made money or built a career? Who cheated?

The site profiles 611 people and companies, from SBA, Treasury and Federal Reserve officials to lenders, contractors and defendants. On the SBA's fee schedule, JPMorgan Chase's PPP loans carried an estimated $1.79 billion in processing fees. The House Select Subcommittee said RER Solutions assigned six employees to an EIDL processing contract and retained more than $340 million. Of 1,131 pandemic-fraud sentencing records, 784 have a prison term that can be charted; their median is 36 months.