The U.S. Census started a COVID-19 impact survey back in April to measure how the pandemic was impacting small businesses. The weekly surveys ran until the end of June.
Unfortunately, the pandemic wasn't over by then. But after skipping 6 weeks, they're back with what they are calling phase 2 of the surveys.
Things haven't improved much over the 6-week layoff according to the small businesses surveyed - 34% of the respondents said the pandemic has had a large negative effect on their business and 45% said it a moderate negative effect. Only 6% said it had a positive effect.
More interesting, 11% said in the week prior to the survey they had decreased the number of employees at their firm and only 7% said the number of employees had increased.
The combination of only 7% saying they increased employment coupled with 11% saying it decreased shows the economy is still struggling.
The Census added a new question in phase 2 asking whether or not small businesses had increased their use of online platforms and marketplaces since the beginning of the pandemic.
As the Census chart below (click to enlarge) shows, only 25% of the SMBs surveyed said they increased their use of online platforms, while 35% said they had not increased their use. 45% said they didn't use online platforms in their business.
This surprised us a bit. Other surveys have shown a greater share of SMBs increasing their use of online platforms. Since it's only one week's worth of data, we'll continue watching this to see if these numbers change.
The pulse survey is well worth following. The Census even provides some simply analysis and visualization tools so you can play with data and/or track it over time.
The 2nd phase of this survey will run through October 15th. We suspect, unfortunately, that there will be a third phase.