40% of black-owned businesses may not survive coronavirus
Jameian Selmon kicked off 2020 with a dozen employees and a full slate of weddings and birthday parties booked for her thriving event-planning company in Minneapolis. Less than four months later, her company is gone — one of hundreds of thousands of black-owned businesses around the U.S. that have closed permanently amid the economic rubble caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
After Minnesota shuttered non-essential employers in March, one client after another called to cancel, costing her $120,000 in business. "As more things got shut down, the weddings for May canceled, then the weddings for June canceled, then July," said Selmon, 42.
"It was really hard for me to let them go," she added in recounting the day she was forced to fire her workers. "It's always been my dream to employ people, and the girls cried. The others, they understood."
There were more than 1 million black-owned businesses in the U.S. at the beginning of February, according to research from the University of California at Santa Cruz, which drew from Census survey estimates. By mid-April, 440,000 black business owners had shuttered their company for good — a 41% plunge. By comparison, 17% of white-owned businesses closed during the same period, the UC Santa Cruz research shows.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/40percent-of-black-owned-businesses-may-not-survive-coronavirus/ar-BB15lTfR?li=BBnbfcN
