The current situation regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has meant that there has been a lot of economic pain and suffering for people all over the world, to go with the obvious health hazards posed by the virus. While the direct impact has been felt through the rising death toll and infection rates, which have stretched healthcare facilities to the limit everywhere, the various lockdown restrictions that were imposed in parts of the world have also served to cripple economic activity. Even now, when many countries and regions are cautiously reopening, people are still rightly wary of stepping out for anything other than the most essential tasks.
Thus, businesses which rely on people stepping out of their homes for their survival have been decimated. Some examples include airlines, hotels, bars and restaurants and travel agencies. The impact has been understandably worse for small businesses, which do not usually have the financial resources to be able to make it through months of low or zero revenue. It will not be surprising if millions of small enterprises everywhere are forced to close down. The true effect of the pandemic in economic terms will not be apparent for some time yet, and even in the USA, we have only just begun to see how bad things truly are, with unemployment claims crossing 1 million for the 20th consecutive week earlier this month.
However, it has been encouraging to see that most Americans are doing whatever they can to support small businesses. In a survey of 2000 American citizens, it was seen that over 75% of respondents said that they would try and help small businesses in some way. On average, it was found that they would be willing to spend up to $100 per week to help local businesses, with many of them saying that they would increase their purchases at such businesses to support them better. 86% of respondents had already helped out such businesses in some way, with 44% of them doing so by taking online classes, such as workout training or cooking classes, to help small entrepreneurs. 77% had purchased online learning sessions or experiences to provide support.
With many states having eased restrictions, many people also signed up for activities in and around their homes. 65% of people surveyed had bought outdoor experiences for their kids, for example, while 60% of people increased their takeout or food delivery orders to support local restaurants. Another way in which people have been spending money is on online forms of entertainment, with gaming sites and portals seeing huge spikes in sign-ups and spending. While many game studios have been giving out games for free during this time, people have also been spending money to buy indie titles from small game developers, while also spending on online casino slots for real money, especially with land-based casinos still closed across most of the country. The stats back this up as well, where online casinos saw a 30% increase in business in March, while online poker games increased by 89% and tournament revenues rose by 123%, showing that these online forms of entertainment have been well-received by customers.
The pandemic still has a lot of legs to run on, and so it is important that Americans and the American government continue to support a lot of local businesses as much as they can during these difficult times.
