Nearly 37% of Connecticut’s small businesses have closed since January due to the Covid-19 pandemic ”“ the sixth-highest rate in the country, according to a report from a Harvard University-based research institute.
The Opportunity Insights report found 36.8% of the state”™s small businesses closed this year, and that revenues at Connecticut small businesses are 39% lower than they were in January 2020, the 11th largest decline among the 50 states.
Losing even more small businesses than Connecticut were Alaska (down 41.7%), Rhode Island (40.8%), New Mexico (39.8%), Maine (37.7%) and Michigan (37.2%). The District of Columbia was hit hardest, with 45.8% of its small businesses shuttering.
Restaurants are among the hardest hit small businesses in Connecticut, with the leisure and hospitality sector losing 87,900 (56%) of industry jobs in March and April. While the sector has since regained two-thirds of those lost jobs, surging coronavirus cases and government restrictions mean many more small businesses face a bleak winter.
On the national level, the report found that about 28.8% of small businesses have closed since the start of the year.
According to Opportunity Insights, the data “is built using anonymized data from several private companies, such as credit card processors and payroll firms. From this data, we construct statistics on consumer spending, employment rates, and other indicators by county, industry, and (pre-crisis) income level. These new statistics allow us to study how Covid-19 has affected the economy with unprecedented precision.”
