COVID-19 And Small Businesses: Uneven Patterns By Race And Income - Part I Of III

from Liberty Street Economics

– this post authored by Ruchi Avtar, Rajashri Chakrabarti, Davide Melcangi, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Giorgio Topa

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in one of the sharpest recessions and recoveries in U.S. history. As the virus spread over the country in a matter of weeks in March 2020, most states rapidly locked down nonessential economic activity, which plummeted as a result. As the first wave of COVID-19 subsided and people gradually learned to “live with the virus,” states reversed most of the initial lockdowns and economic activity rebounded. In our ongoing Economic Inequality series, we have explored many aspects of how the economic turmoil associated with COVID-19 differentially affected households.

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