Small Business Majority’s latest survey reveals that the uncertainty of whether more help will arrive has left too many small businesses on the brink of collapse.
The survey finds that without additional funding, more than 1 in 3 (35%) small business owners will not survive past the next three months. The number is even higher for small business owners of color: an astounding 41% of Black and Latino-owned businesses won’t make it through the next few months without additional financial support. And 1 in 5 small business owners report they’ve considered filing for bankruptcy.
Given current market conditions, it is clear that absent major federal interventions, whole
swathes of the small-business sector will never return, minority business owners will suffer
more than their fair share of the burden, and entrepreneurship levels will remain depressed for a
generation or more. But the collision of these forces—COVID-19, economic consolidation, and
deep racial inequality—also create a window of opportunity for significant reform. This report
provides a five-step roadmap towards a more inclusive, dynamic, and productive small-business sector. We break down the five steps into ten major policy recommendations. While the
federal government must take the lead for many of our recommendations, we also suggest how it
can galvanize the full energy of public, private and civic institutions.
This report provides preliminary findings from the Select Subcommittee’s ongoing investigation of the implementation of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury). The report finds that contrary to Congress’s clear intent, the Trump Administration and many big banks failed to prioritize small businesses in underserved markets, including minority and women-owned businesses. As a result, small businesses that were truly in need of financial support during the economic crisis often faced longer waits and more obstacles to receiving PPP funding than larger, wealthier companies.
In 2017, the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Fund, which explores entrepreneurship as a pathway to economic self-determination and wealth-building for opportunity youth. Del Norte County and Tribal Lands, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and San Francisco, California received YEF grants. The Aspen Forum partnered with the Aspen Institute’s Business Ownership Initiative to co-lead a community of practice among the YEF grantees and document the learnings from this work. Their new case study, “Creating Entrepreneurship Pathways for Opportunity Youth: Lessons From Del Norte and Tribal Lands, California,” explores the local context and history of the opportunity youth efforts and how entrepreneurship fits into the larger body of community-building work in Del Norte.
San Francisco Entrepreneurs of Color Fund: Creating a Continuum of Capital and Consulting The Aspen Institute First published October 2020 Structural inequities—both historical and current—have created barriers for entrepreneurs of color to build wealth and grow their businesses. The San Francisco Entrepreneurs of Color Fund (SFEOCF) seeks to address these inequities by creating a more
The Inland Empire Women’s Business Center and the Coachella Valley Women’s Center conducted a study of their clients to learn more about what helps business owners become employers, creating new jobs for the region. The study also examined the types of jobs provided by micro-businesses and the wages and benefits offered. They discovered that micro-business jobs are often close to home, are flexible to accommodate caregiving and educational pursuits and are a career path.
This report uses the latest publicly available lending data from banks to examine changes in small business credit for June 2017 through June 2019. The data used was collected prior to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and provides a precrisis benchmark on the state of small business lending.
Black owners show biggest decline in business activity. Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on business owners have varied across demographic groups. Data on demographic characteristics and self-employment are collected through the Current Population Survey and available through IPUMS. In July 2020, the total number of people who were self-employed and working was 7.3 percent lower than in July 2019. That decline was a partial recovery from April 2020, when the decline was 20.2 percent relative to April 2019. Declines have been largest for Black self-employed workers, with a decline of 37.6 percent in April and a partial recovery to a decline of 18.4 percent in July. The effects of the pandemic have varied by industry, and demographic differences in the effects of the pandemic reflect demographic differences in distributions across industries.
Women-owned small businesses have been more heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic than male-owned small businesses, and they are less likely to anticipate a strong recovery in the year ahead, new data show. The Special Report on Women-Owned Small Businesses During COVID-19 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also found that women-owned small businesses have less optimistic revenue, investment and hiring plans compared to male-owned small businesses.
Each profile focuses on the impact of small businesses in 436 congressional districts. Within, readers can find the congressional district’s total number of small employers and their industry breakout, plus the number of workers employed and payroll expended by small businesses. Additionally, the profiles provide a map showing the total number and distribution of self-employed workers across the district.