By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
Nearly half of Black small businesses had been wiped out by the end of April as the pandemic ravaged minority communities disproportionately, according to a report from the New York Fed.
Black-owned businesses were more than twice as likely to shutter as their white counterparts, the report found.
“Nationally representative data on small businesses indicate that the number of active business owners fell by 22% from February to April 2020—the largest drop on record,” the report said.
“Black businesses experienced the most acute decline, with a 41% drop. Latinx business owners fell by 32% and Asian business owners dropped by 26%.”
That figure has likely increased substantially as the pandemic has dragged on with a resurgence of cases this summer that has taken the country’s number of infections to a world record of over 5 million.
The number of white-owned small firms, in contrast, fell just 17%.
