SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS DURING COVID-19 America small-business owners moved quickly when COVID-19 started shuttering shops
Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2022 2:01 pm
SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS DURING COVID-19
America small-business owners moved quickly when COVID-19started shuttering shops in March. Fine dining restaurants shiftedto takeout. Book shops introduced curbside pickup. Gyms offeredclasses online.
Business owners, it seemed, just needed to face thisonce-in-a-lifetime calamity and get through a few months, whennormalcy would resume. The Paycheck Protection Program(PPP)—government-funded forgivable loans designed to helpbusinesses pay their employees—would help them weather thestorm.
Six months later, there’s still no end in sight to the pandemicand no easy answers for small-business owners trying to survive.Strict safety protocols haven’t been enough to get customersthrough the door for some small businesses, and many owners—crushedby inventory and overhead costs—are grappling with hardchoices.
“This is the worst small-business crisis of my lifetime, andI’ve seen a number of tough moments,” says Karen G. Mills, seniorfellow at Harvard Business School. “I’m quite concerned that wehaven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg of business closures.”
Yelp, the online review website, estimates that almost 73,000small businesses in the United States had closed permanently as ofJuly 10. And almost half of owners surveyed in late Juneby the online business network Alignable said they lackedenough cash to get through one month and were taking in less than50 percent of their pre-pandemic sales.
“We’re finding that you can’t save businesses by justallowing them to reopen,” Mills says. “Until it’s safe, theiremployees don’t want to come back. Their customers don’t want tocome back. There’s no one out shopping on Main Street.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses provided almosthalf of the country’s private sector jobs and accounted for 44percent of US gross domestic product. While policymakers arestarting to appreciate the economic might of small business, thesefirms collectively lack the lobbying firepower of large industriesat a time when they need aid most, Mills says.
“This is a critical moment for small businesses,” she says. “Ifwe lose too many, it will create a long drag on the ability of theeconomy to recover. We must move now to provide all the supportthat we can, from congressional action to just remembering to ‘shopsmall.’”
The situation appears bleak, but owners still have options, saysMills, who led the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to2013 and was an Obama cabinet member. Getting through the comingmonths will require extreme ingenuity and shrewdness from businessowners, and additional waves of aid from the federalgovernment.
Assignment task-
America small-business owners moved quickly when COVID-19started shuttering shops in March. Fine dining restaurants shiftedto takeout. Book shops introduced curbside pickup. Gyms offeredclasses online.
Business owners, it seemed, just needed to face thisonce-in-a-lifetime calamity and get through a few months, whennormalcy would resume. The Paycheck Protection Program(PPP)—government-funded forgivable loans designed to helpbusinesses pay their employees—would help them weather thestorm.
Six months later, there’s still no end in sight to the pandemicand no easy answers for small-business owners trying to survive.Strict safety protocols haven’t been enough to get customersthrough the door for some small businesses, and many owners—crushedby inventory and overhead costs—are grappling with hardchoices.
“This is the worst small-business crisis of my lifetime, andI’ve seen a number of tough moments,” says Karen G. Mills, seniorfellow at Harvard Business School. “I’m quite concerned that wehaven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg of business closures.”
Yelp, the online review website, estimates that almost 73,000small businesses in the United States had closed permanently as ofJuly 10. And almost half of owners surveyed in late Juneby the online business network Alignable said they lackedenough cash to get through one month and were taking in less than50 percent of their pre-pandemic sales.
“We’re finding that you can’t save businesses by justallowing them to reopen,” Mills says. “Until it’s safe, theiremployees don’t want to come back. Their customers don’t want tocome back. There’s no one out shopping on Main Street.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses provided almosthalf of the country’s private sector jobs and accounted for 44percent of US gross domestic product. While policymakers arestarting to appreciate the economic might of small business, thesefirms collectively lack the lobbying firepower of large industriesat a time when they need aid most, Mills says.
“This is a critical moment for small businesses,” she says. “Ifwe lose too many, it will create a long drag on the ability of theeconomy to recover. We must move now to provide all the supportthat we can, from congressional action to just remembering to ‘shopsmall.’”
The situation appears bleak, but owners still have options, saysMills, who led the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to2013 and was an Obama cabinet member. Getting through the comingmonths will require extreme ingenuity and shrewdness from businessowners, and additional waves of aid from the federalgovernment.
Assignment task-