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Many Small Businesses in the Services Sector Are Unlikely to Reopen

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Abstract

The services sector was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Small businesses were particularly affected, and many of them were forced to close. We examine the state of these firms using micro data from Homebase (HB), a scheduling and time tracking tool that is used by around 100,000 businesses, mostly small firms, in the leisure and hospitality and retail industries. The data reveal that 35 percent of businesses that were active prior to the pandemic are still closed and that most have been inactive for twenty weeks or longer. We estimate that each additional week of being closed reduces the probability that a business reopens by 2 percentage points. Moreover, an additional week of business closure lowers the share of workers that are rehired at reopening. Our estimates imply that only about 4 percent of the workers that are still laid off from the currently closed businesses will eventually be rehired by these businesses.

Suggested Citation

  • David Dam & Sebastian Heise & Davide Melcangi & Will Schirmer, 2021. "Many Small Businesses in the Services Sector Are Unlikely to Reopen," Liberty Street Economics 20210505, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:91339
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; labor markets; unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development

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