‘A Crisis Even Bigger Than Covid’: Why US Small Business Owners Say They’re Barely Getting By

Five years after the pandemic upended Main Street, a growing number of American small business owners say the pressures they face today feel worse than the ones that shuttered their doors in 2020.

That sentiment — captured in the stark phrase “a crisis even bigger than Covid” — reflects a frustration that has been building quietly across the country. Unlike the pandemic, which arrived as a sudden, visible shock, the current squeeze has been gradual and diffuse: a steady accumulation of higher costs, thinner margins and customers who think twice before spending.

The difference this time

When Covid-19 hit, the disruption was universal and unmistakable. Governments responded with emergency loans, grants and forgiveness programs that, whatever their flaws, gave many businesses a bridge to the other side. There was also a widely shared understanding that the crisis was temporary.

Today’s difficulties come with no such clarity. There is no single event to point to, no obvious end date and no comparable rescue package on the table. For owners who drained savings, took on debt or borrowed against their homes to survive the pandemic years, the financial cushion that once existed is gone. Many entered this period already depleted.

Costs up, cushion gone

The complaints tend to cluster around the same themes. The cost of goods, supplies and inventory has climbed and stayed high. Rent and insurance renewals have arrived with unwelcome increases. Wages had to rise to attract and keep staff. Borrowing, once cheap, became expensive, making it harder to finance equipment, expansion or even routine cash-flow gaps.

At the same time, raising prices has become a risky proposition. Consumers who have absorbed years of increases are increasingly price-sensitive, trading down, delaying purchases or simply going out less. For a restaurant, a salon or an independent retailer, that leaves little room to maneuver: absorb the costs and lose money, or pass them on and lose customers.

Why it matters beyond Main Street

Small businesses are not a niche concern. They employ a substantial share of the American workforce and anchor the commercial character of neighborhoods and small towns. When they close, the effects ripple outward — jobs disappear, storefronts sit empty, and the local suppliers and service providers who depend on them lose revenue too.

Their struggles are also an early warning system. Small firms typically have less access to credit and fewer reserves than large corporations, so they feel economic stress sooner and more acutely. When owners start describing conditions as worse than the pandemic, it suggests strain that broader economic indicators may not yet fully capture.

What owners are doing

The responses are familiar to anyone who has run a business under pressure: cutting hours, trimming staff, shrinking menus and product lines, renegotiating with landlords and suppliers, and in some cases, owners working longer shifts themselves rather than paying someone else to do it. Others are consolidating locations or exiting entirely, selling while they still can.

For many, the calculation has shifted from growth to survival — keeping the lights on and hoping conditions improve. Whether they do will depend on factors largely outside any individual owner’s control: interest rates, consumer confidence, the cost of imported goods and the availability of credit.

What is clear is that for a significant slice of American entrepreneurs, the pandemic was not the hardest chapter of their business lives. It was, in their telling, a rehearsal for something harder — and this time, the safety net is thinner. Read More