Facebook survey shows 31% of small businesses stopped operating

One-third of U.S. small businesses have stopped operating, while another 11% expect to fail in the next three months if Covid-19 conditions persist, according to an April survey.

“The numbers are devastating,” said Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., which helped conduct the survey of 86,000 business owners and employees, in partnership with the Small Business Roundtable.

Most of the closed businesses don’t know how they will find the money to reopen, and don’t expect to rehire employees that they had to cut. “That’s because they think they can’t — it’s not that they don’t want to,” Sandberg said in an interview. In normal times, small businesses account for two-thirds of U.S. job growth, she said.