Most Student-Loan Borrowers Made No Payment During US Freeze

A majority of borrowers who together hold about $400 billion in federal student debt made no payment on their loans in the pandemic era, taking full advantage of a freeze put in place at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis.

Data from the Federal Reserve show that 60% of borrowers who qualified for forbearance didn’t make a single payment from August 2020 through December 2021. The US central bank, in a paper published Friday, suggested that some of these 11.5 million borrowers may not be able to resume paying once the freeze is lifted.