The COVID-19 pandemic caused a nationwide shutdown, dragging the US into a recession. To combat the effects of the pandemic on the economy, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) with the focus of preserving jobs and providing liquidity to small businesses. PPP created low-interest, forgivable business loans with forgiveness tied to a few benchmarks, providing a de facto cash transfer to small businesses. Did PPP preserve jobs? When examining Mississippi, this paper shows that counties with high cyclical unemployment participated more intensely in the program. Furthermore, the research shows that as loan totals grew within a county, local labor markets recovered. As such, this paper concludes that PPP did help preserve jobs
