How were small businesses affected by COVID? How did they sustain during pandemic? Is there a solution we can offer?
Why did I choose this question for my genius hour project at school?
The pandemic has been with us for almost 18 months now. During this pandemic, almost 3.7M people according to Wikipedia have died in the world. It has also affected business and the economy globally. A lot of supplies were cut because of covid like tape, pencils, erasers, etc. 44% of the U.S economy comes from small businesses (Source: SBA).
My research is about how small businesses were impacted by COVID and how did they sustain the crisis. During the pandemic, I noticed that a food truck came more often to my community. I felt curious, so I asked my parents as to why they were coming to my community more often now during covid than before covid. I was told that they were coming more often because they wanted to diversify their business to sustain during Covid and that they were losing customers due to COVID. So I decided to find out more about this question and problem.
What is a small business?
A small business is a business that is small in size by customers and income. A small business has fewer than 1500 employees with a maximum of 38.5M total annual income. But this varies across different industries. For example, an agricultural small business can only have up to $750,000 annual income. A wholesale small business would only have a max of 250 employees (source: Fundera).
Click the links below or go to different tabs above: