BOSTON–America’s small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are reporting they continue to face “significant challenges” in trying to rebound from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Alignable September Road To Recovery Report, many small and medium-size businesses say they are experiencing a “recovery reversal” compared to what they reported even a few months ago, largely due to Delta variant surges and inflationary trends, the survey found.
The latest report is based on a poll of 2,864 small business owners from Aug. 28-Sept. 14, along with historic survey data from another 645,000 respondents from March 2020 onward.
The Highlights
According to Alignable, key highlights of the report include:
- 80% of SMBs worry that the Delta variant will hurt their recovery (up 4% from August).
- Only 28% of businesses say they’re fully recovered this month, representing a 7% decline over last month’s figure of 35%.
- Expectations for a full recovery were pushed off by another quarter for the second month in a row. So, the majority of small business owners believe it will take an extra six months to recover, compared to their projections in July.
- Though SMBs reported slight gains in customer counts and revenue last month, those gains are gone now. In fact, 43% of SMBs earn only half or less of the monthly revenue they generated prior to COVID.
- The percentage of fully-open businesses also dropped from 68% in August to 62% in September, showing that some small businesses are scaling back or in some cases, closing.
- The No. 1 concern reported by SMBs in September is the fear that the government might force them to shut down, because of Delta surges. Inflation is a close second, Alignable reported.