Business closures

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CNBC reports,

According to Yelp data, permanent closures have reached 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.

This is what they attribute to the coronavirus. I wonder what the “excess deaths” measure would show. That is, even without the virus, some businesses would close.

My guess is that these are mostly excess deaths, and it will take quite a while for new entrepeneurial activity to employ the people whose jobs have been lost in the process.

9 thoughts on “Business closures”

  1. “Different states are also facing varying degrees of closures, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Yelp sees a correlation between states with a high number of closures and states with a high unemployment rate.”

    Go Texas! Go Georgia! Go Florida!

    You were called “immoral,” “anti-science” and “backward” for opening up “too early,” but you managed to keep the death rates to reasonable levels and you’ve got some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

  2. Not sure Yelp is the best data source, they still show shuttered stores of bankrupt Pier 1 Imports as open on the app. Pier 1 is probably not due to covid since they announced they were closing half of their 900 stores in January but maybe because then they announced in May that all the stores would be closed when they couldn’t find a buyer?

    2019 had already been s bad year for business closures: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business/2019-store-closings-payless-gymboree/index.html. Not sure if any base line has been established previously.

    And let’s not attribute to covid the demise of thousands of businesses destroyed and permanently closed by the acting out of the Che wannabes following George Floyd’s drug overdose induced heart attack.

  3. “According to Yelp data, permanent closures have reached 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.”

    Egads, is that a tortured sentence that ends up fighting with itself?

    Permanent closures are 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening?

    Who’s on first?

  4. The only reasonable argument I can think of for the stock market is that small business has been completely wiped out and absorbed by big business, and since stocks represent big business they are doing fine. Human welfare on the other hand…

    • The stock market is where the rich save/ invest – with most of the money the Fed is printing to cover the huge national debt.

      Hyper ASSET inflation, rather than consumer goods inflation.

      The over-capacity of almost all production facilities, cars, clothes, food, means higher demand can easily be met with existing production facilities, tho usually with hiring more workers.

      The other place is buying houses in good areas.

  5. From the IMF

    We estimate a large increase in the failure rate of SMEs under COVID-19 of nearly 9 percentage points, ab-sent government support. Accommodation & Food Services, Arts, Entertainment & Recreation, Education, and Other Services are among the most affected sectors. The jobs at risk due to COVID-19 related SME business failures represent 3.1 percent of private sector employment.

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