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August 13, 2020

Survey: Small Biz Confidence Ticks Up

Nonetheless, sentiment remains near a historic low for the survey.

By  Christopher Ruvo

Small business confidence in the U.S. has improved in the third quarter of 2020, but it’s still near a historic low amid the economy-jarring COVID-19 pandemic, according to the just-released CNBC | Survey Monkey Small Business Survey.

small business

Based on feedback from more than 2,000 small businesses across the U.S., the survey’s confidence index crept up from 49 in Q2 to 53 in Q3. The second-quarter reading was the worst in the survey’s history. The third-quarter reading is the second worst, but still indicates that business owners are feeling a bit better about their prospects.

“This is not the V-shaped recovery we were hoping for. Things are certainly better than they were last quarter, but far off their marks from what we had seen earlier this year and last year,” Laura Wronski, research scientist at Survey Monkey, told CNBC. “These small businesses are going to have long-lasting effects from this pandemic.”

According to the survey, 36% of businesses believe that operating conditions are good in the third quarter. While low, that’s double the percentage (18%) who said that conditions were good in Q2. One-fourth of respondents said business conditions are bad.

Encouragingly, more business owners believe that they’ll be able to remain in business for a longer period of time. Nearly two-thirds indicated that they’ll be able to persist for more than a year under current conditions – double the amount who said the same in May. In July, the House Small Business Committee reported that 110,000 businesses had closed permanently and that another 7.5 million were in jeopardy of doing the same.

According to the survey, a quarter of businesses that furloughed workers due to shutdowns have hired the employees back. A third of entrepreneurs said they’ve hired some workers back, while 15% reported they have not hired anyone back and do not plan to. Nearly three-quarters (70%) of respondents reported that they believe the pandemic will have permanent impacts on how they run their businesses.