A new report authored by a California economics professor has found that just as African Americans are dying disproportionately from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is killing their businesses at a higher rate as well.
According to the report, the number of African American business owners in the United States has plummeted more than 40 percent as a result of the shutdowns imposed by governing officials in an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.
The number of working Latino business owners dropped 32 percent from February to April, while the number of Asian business owners decreased by about 25%.
But Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who authored the report described its impact on the black business community as “devastating”.
58 percent of black and Latino households in the United States “do not have enough income to cover three months of expenses without income,” compared with 29 percent of white households, according to the NAACP and minority financial groups.
