$40 billion
of taxpayers’ money
to save airline jobs,
yet still almost
80,000 jobs lost*

How was this possible?

The US Airline Industry has been given $40bn of taxpayers’ money since March 2020 to maintain employment levels. So why have 77,000* airline employees lost their jobs?

The Payroll Support Programs (“PSP”) were supposed to maintain employment yet the Big Five airlines have reduced American jobs by 20% since receiving $40bn of taxpayers’ money. This money has clearly not been used to support workers. So where has it gone?

It appears to have gone directly into the pockets of shareholders. Is it a coincidence that the stock value of the Big Five has increased almost dollar for dollar in line with the taxpayer money that was given to them?

The big 5 US airlines - tock price change

And it will happen again

Congress is due to vote on a third round of PSP shortly. PSP3 would allocate $14bn of new money to save 27,000 jobs* for 6 months. That is over $500,000 to save each job for only half a year. HALF A MILLION DOLLARS! With this additional money, airlines will have received a total of $54bn of your tax dollars while terminating 20% of their employees.

* Based on WARN (layoff) notices issued by Big Five to date

Take action

Retweet the message to congress. This next round of funding must be prevented to stop the shareholders profiting from your tax dollars. Many in Congress may simply not recognize that PSP has given your hard-earned tax dollars to benefit shareholders much more than workers. Retweet the message below to Senators and Representatives to #StopPSP3.

What would you choose?

$14BN of taxpayers' money to delay the layoff of 27,000 airline jobs or extend Unemployement Insurance for 10M struggling Americans.

Money well spent?

$14bn of #taxpayers' money to delay the layoff of 27,000 airline employees for 3 months at a cost of $500,000 per job!!! Money well spent?

* Airline employee losses by year

Employees by airline 2019 2020
American Airlines [1] [2] 133,700 102,700
United Airlines [3] [4] 95,900 74,00
Southwest Airlines [5] [6] 60,767 56,537
Delta [7] [8] 91,000 74,000
Jet Blue [9] [10] 18,535 15,450
Total employees 399,902 323,087
  1. American Airlines 2019 (p.52)
  2. American Airlines 2020 (p.70)
  3. United Airlines 2019 (p.6)
  4. United Airlines 2020 (p.6)
  5. Southwest Airlines 2019 (p.51)
  6. Southwest Airlines 2020 (p.51)
  7. Delta 2019 (p.11)
  8. Delta 2020 (p.7)
  9. Jet Blue 2019
  10. Jet Blue 2020

Big 5 Airlines Stock Values by quarter

$bn Mar 20 Jun 20 Sep 20 Dec 20 Feb 21
American [1] 5,155 6,647 6,251 9,801 13,340
United [2] 7,801 10,070 10,110 13,490 16,150
Southwest [3] 17,860 20,160 22,120 27,520 34,440
Delta [4] 18,200 17,890 19,500 25,660 30,790
Jet Blue [5] 2,414 2,969 3,087 4,572 5,814
Total SV 51,430 57,736 61,068 81,043 100,534
  1. American Airlines
  2. United Airlines
  3. Southwest Airlines
  4. Delta
  5. Jet Blue