Last year, Georgia’s small businesses were hit hard by social distancing and isolation to slow the spread of COVID-19. To help better understand the pandemic’s impacts on small business owners, the U.S. Census Bureau created the Small Business Pulse Survey, which just closed data collection in mid-July, 2021. Below, we’re taking a look at the most recent releases of Atlanta-area data to see what the local impact of an international crisis looked like. Take a look at our previous posts to see the insight on the phase 1 data and phase 2 data.

Small businesses in the Atlanta MSA

Around the same time as the state’s shelter-in-place order in April 2020, more than half (51.4 percent) of respondents said their business experienced a large negative effect from the pandemic. Almost a year later, the figure fell to less than 30 percent. Although the percent share of the businesses that answered “moderate negative effect” remained steadily between 40 and 50 percent, we do see major improvements in the “little or no effect” category, which jumped from 10 percent to nearly 25 percent.

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As part of the project, the Census Bureau also developed the Overall Sentiment Index (OSI). The index ranges from 1 to 1, with values closer to -1 indicating strong negative sentiment, 0 indicating little or no effect, and values closer to 1 indicating strong positive sentiment.

As the chart below shows, we’re still seeing negative sentiment (note that the chart’s upper limit is -.35), but the index is steadily increasing, which means that more and more businesses are seeing things get better as time goes by. From the beginning of the pandemic to the October 2020, small businesses in Atlanta MSA (red line) were more pessimistic about the pandemic effect than the national average (blue line) but as we moved into 2021, we see that they’re less negative than the national average.

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The negative perception likely is related to revenue decreases (chart below). Fewer than 20 percent of businesses experienced an increase in their revenue since the pandemic began (blue line). However, as time goes by, more and more Atlanta MSA small businesses saw their revenue recover to pre-pandemic levels (green line). This changes closely mirrors the decrease in the negative OSI score.

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The uptick in revenues might have contributed to rising optimism about economic recovery. The Expected Recovery Index (ERI), developed by the Census Bureau, shows that more and more small businesses are anticipating a shorter length of time in their economic recovery (below). This index ranges with -1 to 0, with -1 representing a lengthy business recovery time and 0 representing no recovery time. We can also see that – currently, and this is the last time we’ll get the data – small businesses in the Atlanta MSA expect a shorter recovery time than the national average.

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Please visit the SBPS webpage for more information.