Economics
Black Businesses Saw Outsize Covid Hit to Earnings, Study Shows
A "Black Owned Business" sign in the window of a restaurant in Brooklyn, New York.
Photographer: David Dee Delgado/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Black business owners experienced much larger losses in earnings than their White counterparts during the height of the pandemic, likely widening long-term economic inequality, according to a new study.
Black-owned businesses saw earnings decrease 28% in 2020, compared to a 15% drop for White-owned businesses and a 17% overall decline, Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, wrote in a paper. Latino and Asian businesses also experienced outsize declines.