10% of student loan borrowers are newly unemployed

Credit: New York Times and the U.S Department of Labor

According to the U.S Department of Labor, over 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past month. Obviously, this is an unheard-of amount of job loss, but how does it affect student loan borrowers?

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans have student debt, so a conservative estimate would suggest that 4.4 million student loan borrowers have recently lost their jobs completely.

10% of all student loan borrowers are recently unemployed — and that’s a conservative estimate!

We know these borrowers are the most vulnerable financially, so these numbers could easily be much higher.

What can we do?

Borrowers who have no taxable income and are not yet receiving unemployments benefits can request an income-driven plan right now that will lock in $0 / payments for the year.

Borrowers need to act on this now while it’s still available to them — there’s no better time.

For most income-driven plans, large government subsidies cover the interest charges, even outside the current forbearance enacted by the CARES ACT.

If you work at a company whose customers have student debt, schedule a 30-min session with our team to discuss how we can help level-up your suite of financial wellness tools and help your customers solve student debt for good.