Entrepreneurship Is the Vaccine for Urban Economies
Prioritizing new businesses will lead to job creation and a faster recovery from Covid-19. Communities need to help.
An empty storefront in downtown Concord, New Hampshire. Between February and June, about 1.2 million U.S. business owners had to shut down.
Photographer: Elizabeth Frantz/BloombergThe economic damage to America’s cities from Covid-19 is deep, and recovery will require more than defeating the pandemic. About 60% of business closures are now permanent, according to recent data from Yelp. Our cities won’t revive until we create new businesses to replace those lost. Fortunately, there are tools available to boost business starts and restarts. Entrepreneurship is the vaccine to revive our urban economies.
Our cities face a deep entrepreneurial hole. Even before the pandemic, we were in a startup slump. Business creation in the U.S. had fallen overall to its lowest rate in more than 40 years. But then Covid-19 hit and forced many businesses to close. Between February and June, about 1.2 million U.S. business owners had to shut down, including 19% of Black entrepreneurs and 10% of Latinx ones.