Main Street America, a network of 1,600 commercial districts covering 300,000 small businesses, has conducted a survey offering some sobering statistics on the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The group reached out to 6,000 small business owners about their economic prospects for the coming months. After extrapolating the data, it found that a significant number of businesses are under threat of closing across the U.S.
"We're looking at potentially 7.5 million businesses closing over the next five months, absent some pretty significant intervention to help support those businesses," Main Street America CEO Patrice Frey told Cheddar.
This could cause 35 million job losses in the small business sector alone over the same period, according to Frey, and this is limited to companies with 20 or fewer employees.
She added that impact was spread across industries and across the rural and urban divide.
"I will say the food industry was a little more hard-hit than others," she said.
Her organization is making the case that more robust federal support is needed to stop this fallout, including additional funding for the Small Business Administration, which saw its share of the federal stimulus quickly eaten up by businesses in need of loans.
"The funding needs to be replenished and it needs to be replenished immediately and at a scale that is actually going to enable the business that need the resources to get them," Frey said. "We were extraordinarily disappointed to see that larger business absorbed the lion's share of the first round. That left many small businesses in a lurch. We're hopeful that those truly small businesses will be able to make it into this second round."
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
