The U.S. Census Bureau reported on May 14, 2020 that an average 41.4% of businesses in its first Small Business Pulse results had temporarily closed a location for at least one day. The experimental survey collected responses from April 26 to May 2. Its closure question asked about the preceding week, giving owners and local planners a measure of interrupted operations—not a count of firms that had gone out of business. [S1][S2]
The disruption was particularly visible in some service sectors. Census reported temporary-closure shares of 72.2% in educational services and 70.8% in arts, entertainment and recreation. Those figures describe the same at-least-one-day threshold. They do not show whether a closure lasted one day or the whole week, how much revenue was lost, or whether a business was still closed when the results appeared. For a local comparison, the relevant count is businesses reporting a temporary closure, not storefronts that appear permanently shut. [S2]
Recovery expectations answer a different question. Census reported that 31.4% expected more than six months to pass before their businesses returned to their usual level of operations. The survey explicitly asked for the respondent’s opinion. That makes the result useful as a reading of expectations during the collection period, but not a Census forecast of how long recovery would actually take. It also does not establish the reopening date of a temporarily closed location: a business can resume some activity without returning to its usual level. [S2]
The survey reached a defined slice of business activity. Census said it delivered the first email survey to 100,915 small businesses and received 22,449 responses. Its launch explanation described small businesses as single locations with one to 499 employees and at least $1,000 in annual revenue. That description does not cover every self-employed person or every company branch. The invitation and response counts are also separate from the percentages reported for each survey question. [S2]
Census planned to update the results every Thursday through July 9, with national, state and sector figures in the first release. A reopening tracker needs the collection period beside each number. The May 14 publication described responses collected through May 2; calling it a snapshot of conditions on May 14 would erase that gap. [S1]
Source documents
- U.S. Census Bureau Releases Small Business Pulse Survey Resultshttps://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/small-business-pulse-survey.html
- Weekly Census Bureau Survey Provides Near-Real-Time Info on Businesseshttps://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/new-small-business-pulse-survey-shows-breadth-of-covid-19-impact-on-businesses.html