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New study spotlights devastating toll coronavirus shutdown will have on America’s small business

May 7, 2020 | | Print Article

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A survey by the 72-year-old Society for Human Resource Management has found that 52 percent of American small businesses expect to permanently shut down within six months thanks to the economic repercussions of the government’s coronavirus response.

A smaller but still notable 12 percent believe their businesses won’t even last another month.

“SHRM has tracked Covid-19’s impact on work, workers, and the workplace for months, but these might be the most alarming findings to date,” the association’s CEO, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., said in a statement.

“Small business is truly the backbone of our economy, so when half say they’re worried about being wiped out, let’s remember: We’re talking about roughly 14 million businesses.”

Speaking on CNBC last month, Taylor predicted the aftereffects of this crisis are going to stick with the American people for some time going forward.

“It’s going to be quite different. … We’re going to see a significant switch in mentality and approach of workers and workplaces in the future,” he said.

Listen (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):

Of the business owners surveyed by SHRM, 60 percent admitted to having lost revenue because of the coronavirus crisis and the lockdown orders that soon followed.

“For 13 percent of them, the revenue loss has been total. More than half have laid off some employees; 14 percent laid off all of them. About 4 in 10 small businesses have had to close their physical operations,” SHRM reported.

The association’s findings fit with other reports and data showing that the lockdown measures being pursued by governors across the state are not sustainable.

“Business filings under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law rose sharply in March, and attorneys who work with struggling companies are seeing signs that more owners are contemplating the possibility of bankruptcy,” the Associated Press reported late last month.

“Companies forced to close or curtail business due to government attempts to stop the virus’s spread have mounting debts and uncertain prospects for returning to normal operations. Even those owners receiving emergency loans and grants aren’t sure that help will be enough.”

Some businesses have been forced to buck government orders and reopen anyway, even if it means potentially being arrested by a swat team.

But these effects aren’t just being felt on a business level — they’re being felt on a personal one as well.

“Before the pandemic, food policy experts say, roughly one out of every eight or nine Americans struggled to stay fed. Now as many as one out of every four are projected to join the ranks of the hungry, said Giridhar Mallya, senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for public health,” the AP reported Tuesday.

And that’s just in the states. On a global level, the United Nations has predicted that hundreds of thousands of children may die before year’s end specifically because of the economic realities being engendered by the current crisis.

“Economic hardship experienced by families as a result of the global economic downturn could result in hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths in 2020, reversing the last 2 to 3 years of progress in reducing infant mortality within a single year,” a U.N. report published last month reads.

“And this alarming figure does not even take into account services disrupted due to the crisis – it only reflects the current relationship between economies and mortality, so is likely an under-estimate of the impact.”

View the report below:

But while the crisis is affecting everybody, concerns about small businesses have devolved into a tribal battle, with some members of the far-left dismissing business owners as “selfish” monsters.

Likewise, some members of the far-left appear to believe business owners should just suck it up as their lives fall apart.

Below are several examples of CNN’s left-wing personalities insulting and denigrating anyone who dares to suggest the current situation isn’t sustainable:

Yet even New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has admitted this situation isn’t sustainable.

“People are all talking about reopening, which we should be talking about. This is not a sustainable situation, close down everything, close down the economy, lock yourself in the home. You can do it for a short period of time, but you can’t do it forever,” he said this past Monday.

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Vivek Saxena
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