Ongoing pandemic poses continued challenges for Main Street America
Concern over the negative impacts of COVID remains high among America’s small businesses, with 82 percent reporting in a recent survey that they are at least “somewhat” concerned. The survey, conducted by Thryv Holdings, the provider of Thryv® software, the end-to-end customer experience platform built for growing small businesses, polled over 750 owners and managers of small businesses. In addition to economic concerns, the survey also revealed that as vaccination rates across the U.S. grow, small businesses are debating whether to mandate vaccination among employees – with a majority (58 percent) responding that they do not plan to require vaccination.
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Among the findings of the survey:
- 60 percent of respondents think the U.S. will experience either a mild or deep recession within a year.
- Among those that have attempted to hire new employees, only 38 percent have succeeded.
- 76 percent say it is “somewhat” or “very” much more difficult to hire new employees now, compared to prior to the pandemic.
- About half of those that have employees, or are trying to hire new ones, have recently offered higher wages, with hikes as high as 15 percent.
- 82 percent of small businesses said they have recently experienced shortages – of supplies, materials, inventory, or workers.
- 31 percent say they have had to turn customers away because of the shortages.
“Small business owners welcomed the vaccine roll-out, but many are again concerned as the pandemic drags on and restrictions and lockdowns again become commonplace ,” said Thryv Chief Strategy Officer Gordon Henry. “On top of these COVID-related concerns, small businesses are having difficulty hiring help and accessing supplies. We encourage decision makers to take the steps needed to help local businesses get back to something approaching normality.”
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Thryv — a global SaaS and marketing solutions company with over 400,000 small business clients worldwide — and America’s SBDC conducted the nationwide small business study as part of an ongoing effort to track small-business economic outlook amid the ongoing pandemic.
Survey participants are owners or senior managers of small businesses across more than 50 industries. The majority of these businesses are well established. Fifty-five percent have been in operation for over 30 years. Half have annual revenue below $500,000. Female and minority-owned businesses represent 35 percent of those completing the survey.