Roughly 42 million borrowers are covered by a federal student loan repayment pause that began in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. While the freeze was meant to offer relief to those with student loan debt, the Philadelphia Fed’s report concludes that it is largely benefiting a group of borrowers who say they could make their payments — and doesn’t go far enough to address some of the issues that other borrowers face.
“For some borrowers, additional forbearance extensions are simply postponing a day of reckoning with loan payments that are unaffordable,” the authors wrote.
