While stay-at-home orders, quarantining and social distancing had an impact on virtually all businesses last year — especially those run by small business owners — Asian American businesses (including restaurants, stores, nail salons and other service industries) appeared to suffer the largest overall losses, according to a new study from the New York Federal Reserve and AARP.
Jonnelle Marte of Reuters has reported that “language barriers and a dearth of banking relationships made it difficult for some business owners to access government aid, even as they coped with an added layer of fear amid a surge in hate crimes linked to racist rhetoric that blames Asians for the coronavirus.”
Things didn’t start out that badly for many of these businesses, however. Marte reported that before COVID-19-related closures and restrictions, “9% of firms owned by Asian Americans were financially ‘distressed’ in 2019 — far lower than the 19% of Black-owned firms and 16% of Hispanic-owned businesses given that rating based on their profitability, credit score and business funding, according to New York Fed research. Among white-owned firms, the figure was 6%.”
