Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
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Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#2Isn't this tracked to some degree in unemployment stats? Is being laid off from a small business that different from being laid off from a large business?
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#3This is the undercurrent of the pandemic's impacts. Businesses are disappearing by the tens of thousands and they are not necessarily represented in the normal metrics of bankruptcies.
Unemployment and GDP are impacted by these closures, but without showing up as their own segment, not much is being done to counteract it.
Retail & shopping centers are looking like ghost towns, and that is not good for overall economic health once we get to the other side.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#4Isn't this tracked to some degree in unemployment stats? Is being laid off from a small business that different from being laid off from a large business?
It probably does show up, but a huge number of small business are basically just the owner and some independent contractors (or just people they pay cash under the table to occasionally). Often the owners aren't even employees, and if they are, in some states they don't qualify for certain benefits by virtue of having been the owner.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#5Guess who bought up real estate post-2009 crisis, when prices were at rock bottom? Wealthy individuals and corporations that had enough assets to withstand the storm and capitalize on a down market.
Guess who will grab more market share post-COVID? Better yet, guess who wasn't affected by forced lockdowns and benefited during the worst of COVID?
I find it very distressing that this massive transfer of wealth from small businesses to megacorps isn't being discussed more.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#6In my area, I'd say about 50% of the storefronts in any shopping area are brown-papered.
The other side of this, is that larger business are taking advantage of the small business' desperation, to buy them at rapacious prices, or coerce them into really bad deals.
Meaning that some of the small businesses that "survive" this downturn, have just postponed death.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#7When 47% of the things you're classifying are "miscellaneous", you've got some more categories to come up with.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#8Non-paywall link[0]
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#9It's tracked in the Census of Business and Industries. That's mostly annual, not real-time.
Re: Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands – and No One Is Tracking the Carnage
#10For small businesses that are able to move online, there is no shortage of revenue available. In the article they mention a yoga studio owner closing up her shop. I agree that a yoga studio is pretty tough to move online. They also mention a jewellery brand, and that is exactly the type of boutique business that can be successful right now with the right marketing and ecommerce solution. My partner does online sales and marking consulting, and every one of her clients has at least doubled revenue within one month of onboarding. Most of them now have problems maintaining stock, not making sales. I don't know if these healthy sales will last, but for now I'm not seeing any ceiling for small businesses who make something or sell a service that works online. My guess is that a lot of SME owners just aren't aware of how to approach online sales.