I recently read something comparing how the European governments handled the Covid economic downturn differently from they way we did it here in the States. In the States, we used the stimulus money to expand unemployment benefits, and thus provide funds for laid-off workers. In Europe, apparently, they directly subsidized employers to encourage the employers to not lay off people, even if business was in the toilet. The US did have a "paycheck protection program," that apparently was poorly managed and may not have saved many jobs, and the loans were apparently given to businesses that didn't need them.
The advantage of having stimulus money directed to encourage employers to keep people on payroll despite the lack of business is that when business picks up again, you have the staff immediately available to retstart operations. While business is lousy, you can use the employees who are being subsidized to do stuff like, say, repairing and ugrading equipment (rail cars) and facilities. It's also a lot less stressful on the workers, as they're not facing the hassle of being laid off and having to deal with the various state unemployment compensation systems or the shame of "losing" their jobs.
