Vice President Kamala Harris, from left, U.S. President Joe Biden and Senate Spokesman Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, wear protective masks as they meet with Democratic senators in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Wednesday, February 3rd. , 2021 to discuss Covid-19 stimulus relief.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
America’s small business owners have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite two rounds of federal lending programs aimed at helping smaller employers, a majority in Main Street are still asking for more help.
Sixty-three percent of small business owners support the $ 1.9 billion Covid aid package currently being pushed by President Joe Biden’s government and debated in Congress, according to the latest quarterly CNBC | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey.
This includes 46% of Republican small business owners who support the first major legislative proposal of the new Democratic government. In fact, Biden’s emergency relief package has far more Republican support than Biden himself has. Only 14% of Republican small business owners say they approve of how Biden handles his job as president.
Support for more relief comes as confidence among small business owners has fallen to a new low since the quarterly shell survey began in 2017. The small business confidence index fell from 48 out of a possible 100 in the fourth quarter last year to 43 of these. term. In addition, the number of small business owners who believe they can continue for more than a year under current business conditions dropped from 67% in the fourth quarter to 55%.
The Q1 2021 CNBC | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey was conducted from January 25 to January 31 using the SurveyMonkey platform and included responses from 2111 small business owners across the country.
The debate over more federal relief has become more biased among small business owners now that former President Donald Trump has left office. In the fourth quarter, a whopping 83% of small business owners expressed support for a $ 900 billion package approved by Congress and signed by Trump in late December.
“There are more Republicans than Democrats who own small businesses,” said Laura Wronski, research manager at SurveyMonkey. ‘When we did the last survey, it was after the election, but it was still in this interim period in which … there was still a bit of doubt among people [about the outcome]. I think people’s perceptions may have hardened while they were at stake a bit more in December. Because it’s the opening height of Biden’s government, it’s becoming easier to say yes or no. ‘
Support for the latest package may also have declined, Wronski says, because it may include an increase in the federal minimum wage, a measure that is usually unpopular with business owners. The survey found that 54% of small business owners do not increase the federal minimum wage to $ 15 / hour, while 44% support the increase.
Steep decline in Main Street’s business prospects
Overall, confidence in small businesses was hit by a sharp decline in the number of small business owners who say overall business conditions are ‘good’ (from 39% in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 29% in this quarter), as well as large increases in the number of small business owners who expect potential changes in tax, trade, regulatory and even immigration policies to have a negative impact on their businesses in the coming year – all largely due to a “collapse” of trust among Republican small business owners.
Wronski noted that only 17% of Republicans said a year ago that they expected government regulations to have a negative impact on their business. This quarter it is 82%, essentially more than quadrupling year-on-year. Meanwhile, 40% of Democrats said in the first quarter of 2020 that they expect changes in regulation to have a negative impact on their businesses, and this quarter dropped to 12%. “This is a great example of how the democratic increase in confidence cannot compensate for the decline in Republican confidence. The extent is just as different between the two groups in terms of how much their perception has changed year over year,” she said.
Confidence among Republican small business owners has completely collapsed since Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden. The Republican Small Business Confidence Index is 32, which is 25 points lower than in the third quarter of 2020, the last survey conducted before the election. It is also 9 points lower than the lowest confidence reading for Democratic small business owners during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Conversely, confidence among small business owners who identify themselves as Democrats rose to 63, 17 points higher than the poll before the election.