(ETH) – A third of small businesses in New Jersey have closed down in 2020, according to a report from The Star-Ledger newspaper. “It’s really bad… And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter,” said Eileen Kean, the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.
Harvard-based data project TrackTheRecovery.org estimated that 31 percent of businesses have closed down so far as of Nov. 9. This number is just above the national average estimated by the website. The New Jersey Business & Industry Association reported similar numbers, estimating 28 percent of businesses had closed down by October.
The newspaper notes that despite the holiday shopping season, business leaders are still concerned that the trend could get worse as stimulus talks stall on Capitol Hill. New Jersey, like most of the U.S., is currently experiencing a surge of new cases. Over 329,000 cases and nearly 17,000 deaths have been reported. On Nov. 21, New Jersey recorded 4,669 cases, the most it has ever reported in a single day. READ MORE
When Covid-19 hit the U.S. in March, revenue at Alyssa Manny’s yoga studio fell 60 percent to 70 percent. And it wasn’t just her. Nearly every business on Tennyson Street, in a gentrifying neighborhood about 15 minutes from downtown Denver, was hit hard by the pandemic.
First to go was Biju’s Little Curry Shop, a popular dining spot featuring dishes that Biju Thomas grew up within south India, like samosa chaat, dosas, and rotis. He moved to the U.S. in 1980 and settled in north Denver. February had been his best month since he opened the restaurant in 2016. But by March, he was done.
“We lost $80,000 in bookings that first week,” Thomas said recently. “We had weddings and events booked into March, April, May. We did about $400,000 in catering and events over the course of a year. Fifteen hundred meals a day out of the kitchen. There’s no coming back from that.”
Thomas’s experience is echoed by small-business owners across the country who have fallen on hard times since the start of the pandemic, which has killed over 260,000 people in the U.S. and strangled the economy. At least 100,000 small businesses nationwide have closed permanently, according to a Yelp analysis released in September. Many others are barely hanging on. READ MORE
