Poll: SMBs worried about recession

Even before states began shutting down schools and issuing shelter-in-place orders due to the COVID-19 outbreak, small business owners were worried about a recession. Now that many businesses have been shuttered to help stop the spread of the pandemic, SMB owners are even more worried.

by Kristina Knight

New data out from SurePayroll finds that, even before fears of the pandemic hit, 24% of owners were worried about how their business would fare. About 3% operated at a loss for the latter part of 2019 and 12% thought they'd end 2020 in the red financially. Other interesting findings include:

▪ 4 in 10 say their business impacts their family/home life
▪ 25% say their business impacts their mental health
▪ 25% say they are worried they 'won't be able to cover' payroll at some point in 2020

More data from SurePayroll's Small Business Worry Index can be accessed here.

The US Chamber of Commerce is also calling for the Trump administration to do more for small business owners. Last week, the chamber sent a letter to the president, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to cancel payroll taxes to help ease the burden on small businesses during this time.

"Temporarily cancelling the collection of these taxes will reduce the cost for employers for continuing to pay employees regardless of whether they are working or on sick leave and increase liquidity for employers to help them respond to losses in revenue," Chamber CEO Tom Donohue wrote in the letter, via TheHill.com.

The US Chamber has a second proposal that would make disaster loan programs available to small businesses through the Small Business Association.

Meanwhile, data from Convey sheds light on how businesses, small and large, are faring over the past few weeks of dealing with COVID-19. According to their data about 40% of retail and supply chain leaders are already seeing delays and disruption, but many retailers continue to see people ordering for deliver. For instance, their data shows online shipping volume increased almost 7% for early February and by early March has increased 52% (YoY).

The Convey data further shows:

▪ Order fulfillment time us up 40% over the past 3 weeks, to about 21.2 hours
▪ Delivery delays are also on the increase, up from a 2.9% increase at the beginning of March to just over 4% by mid-March
▪ Shipping volume for household and cleaning supplies is up 52%

More data from Convey can be accessed here.

Tags: Convey, COVID19, ecommerce, ecommerce trends, retail trends, small business trends, SMB trends, SurePayroll, US Chamber of Commerce