41% of black-owned businesses shuttered during pandemic’s first month

The economic tumult created by the COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous impact on black-owned businesses, according to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

NBER black owned business closed In an analysis of the pandemic”™s impact on the number of active small businesses using nationally representative data from April, the report found approximately 441,000 black-owned businesses, or 41%, closed during the government-ordered shutdowns to stop the pandemic”™s spread.

In comparison, 658,000 Latino-owned businesses, or 32%, were closed, 1.1 million businesses owned by immigrants, or 32%, were shuttered and 1.3 million women-owned businesses, of 25%, were terminated.

“Most major industries faced large drops in the number of business owners with the only exception being agriculture, said Robert Fairlie, an economist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of the report.

“Construction, restaurants, hotels and transportation all faced large declines in the number of business owners due to COVID-19. Simulations reveal that the concentrations of female, black, Latinx and Asian businesses in industries hit hard by the pandemic contributed to why losses were higher for these groups than the national average loss.”