Alignable: 52% Of Minority-Owned SMBs Can't Afford July Rent
Alignable’s July Rent Poll showed that many industries and groups are still coping with the lasting effects of the COVID era, while others are bouncing back more quickly.
Alignable polled 5,911 small business owners from 7/2/21 to 7/23/21 and learned that the majority of minority-owned businesses (52%) still could not pay their rent in July.
That figure is much higher than the U.S. national average (35%) and the Canadian average (43%), both of which include all demographic groups and industries.
Women Face Ongoing Issues; Veterans Are On An Upswing
More than one-third of women-owned businesses (37%) also did not pay full rent on time in July, whereas fewer male-owned and veteran-owned businesses struggled.
In fact, compared to June, the veteran-owned businesses saw a 15 percentage point increase in the number of owners who could pay their full rent. So that’s a silver lining in this report.
Unfortunately, in comparison to June, the same percentage of women-owned small businesses paid rent in July compared to June.
Only 1% more of the minority-owned businesses could pay their rent this month. And only 2% more of all small businesses could cover July rent in full and on time.
Those increases represent glimmers of hope, but are not all that significant, especially given that 33% of all business owners tell us they're fully recovered at this point and many others have had revenue gains, according to our July Road To Recovery Report.
Rent Troubles Continue For Restaurants, Retailers & Others
Sectors that continue to struggle to pay monthly rent include: nonprofits (64%), entertainers/artists (50%), transportation (48%), event planners (43%), restaurants (40%), beauty salons (39%), gyms/fitness centers (38%), retailers (37%), construction (37%), and travel (28%).
Comparing these industries to our figures from June shows more ups and downs. The good news is that more small businesses in a few industries demonstrated that they could pay their rent this month than in June.
These industries where the ability to pay rent increased included travel (up 14%), event planning (up 7%), construction (up 4%) and beauty salons (up 1%).
However, looking at our chart from June below, you can see that a higher percentage of small businesses in other industries are having more trouble paying their rent. An additional 22% of nonprofits couldn’t pay their rent (jumping from 42% to 64%), largely because they report that donations to many charities are down.
Times are tougher for transportation companies, including individual Uber or Lyft drivers, as 48% this month couldn’t pay rent vs. just 43% in June. Other industries showed increased trouble affording rent, such as entertainers/artists (up 3%), retailers (up 2%), and restaurants (up 1%).
What About The States and Provinces?
Here’s how the situation looks for regional and local stories.
As mentioned above, in the U.S., 35% couldn’t pay rent in July. In Canada, 43% of all small businesses were in the same boat.
States with the highest percentages of small businesses unable to pay full rent include GA (46%), NY (41%), MA (41%), and MD (37%).
In direct contrast, states with the lowest percentages of rent problems were TN (18%), WA (18%), MO (22%), OR (22%), AZ (24%), VA (25%), CO (26%), and FL (27%). (Those figures show another silver lining).
Here are the percentages of small businesses in other states that weren’t able to pay July rent. Many of these figures are still high, though, in past reports, some of these states were in worse shape.
- CA: 35%
- CT: 34%
- IL: 35%
- MI: 34%
- NC: 34%
- NJ: 34%
- OH: 31%
- PA: 32%
- SC: 34%
- TX: 32%
- WI: 30%
In Canada, several big regions showed that over 40% of their small businesses still couldn’t handle paying their full rent on time in July: ON (46%), BC (42%), and AB (41%).
For more information about the states or provinces, or additional statistics related to Alignable’s July Rent Poll, please reach out to me at chuck@alignable.com.
To see other polls we’ve conducted since March 2020, please go to the Alignable Research Center.
ABOUT THE ALIGNABLE RESEARCH CENTER
Alignable is the largest online referral network for small businesses with over 6.5 million members across North America.
We established our research center in early March 2020, to track and report the impact of the Coronavirus on small businesses, and to monitor recovery efforts, informing the media, policymakers, and our members.
Comments (21-30)
Who here would like leads for your business?
Covid has negatively impacted many especailly those with less access to proper health care which are most times minorities. And hospitals have been overwhelmed by the surge of cases by the much more aggressive Variance. However technology and online shopping keeps improving and increasing along-side these and other challenges and adversity.
Our company triple in size as more people started attending Zoom meetings during the first year of Covid. We simultaniously must implement herd immunity to our decline in effective leadership and our financial literacy. As a result we will lessen axieties depression isolation and a host of other destracts that will allow us to focus on priorities and threat of all forms.
HI Chuck, nice to meet you. I would love to talk for 15-20 minutes if you have some time next week and see if we can help each other. Cheers, Eileen
There are so many factors that play into these things, and I’m curious if there is anyone working to really understand underlying causes. Is this demographic more risk averse so not as quick to change with the tides? Are they more in the categories of businesses that had mandatory shutdowns? In other words, of the categories listed, what are the ratios? Are they quicker to voluntarily shut down out of concern for health? It’s interesting to me that construction and real estate are on the list at all, since those were booming industries in the last year. What were these categories, percentages, and ratios in February 2020 or July 2019? There are more questions, but these were just a few I had as I read the article, that would really give some insight to the bigger picture. Thanks to all who are working to understand and help these situations!
Down right sickening! We should all be ashamed to be living in times such as these with women and children being thrown out on the street. So sad
I fail to see how getting a loan can be a viable solution...
People ahould support a business because they have a product or service better than others. Not because of Race, Religion or Sexual Preference. Support local business. I see a ton of Amazon trucks out there. Ordering online will not help locally owned business owners.
If small business, or any business is looking for the stimulus check to sustain them, they are banking on the wrong premise. We cannot depend on the Government spending money they don't have to be the savior of business. Small business needs to be aggressive about business to ultimately survive.
What can happen with expiring Eviction Moratoriums:
What's next for struggling renters now that the eviction moratorium has expired? (msn.com)