Most SB owners support Biden’s COVID relief plan: Poll
Sixty-three percent of small business (SB) owners support President Joe Biden’s $1.9 Trillion COVID relief plan, according to the the results of the quarterly CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey.
The COVID relief plan has support from 46% of Republican SB owners, according to a results-sharing press release US and Global News received from CNBC parent NBCUniversal. The survey also found that just 14% of Republican SB owners approve Biden’s handling of his job as president.
President Biden has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour as part of the COVID relief plan. While 54% of SB owners oppose it, Republican SB owners are much more likely to say that this wage would force them to fire employees.
Forty-four percent of Republican SB owners say they would be forced to let workers go if the minimum pay is raised, compared to 11% of Democrat SB owners.
Moreover, companies with 5-9 and 10-49 workers are much more likely to fire workers compared with companies that have more than 50 employees.
The survey findings come as confidence among SB owners drops to a new all-time low since the start of the quarterly tracking survey in 2017, with the Small Business Confidence Index dropping from 48 out of a possible 100 in quarter four of 2020 to 43 this quarter.
The number of SB owners who say overall business conditions are “good” has plunged (from 39% in the last year’s fourth quarter to 29% this quarter). Moreover, the number of SB owners expecting changes in regulatory, trade, tax and immigration policy will have a negative impact on their businesses has sharply increased.
SurveyMonkey chief research officer Jon Cohen said, “The pressure is rising for small business owners, with barely more than half saying they can make it another year under current conditions. That’s a significantly less optimistic stance than we tallied last quarter, and fuels the widespread support for a big COVID relief package.”
He added, “The squeeze is particularly hard for minority small business owners: among Black small business owners, just 37% think they can make it 12 months without things changing.”
Image credit - Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States (CC BY-SA 2.0)
