Left-wing Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. President Joe Biden, and New York Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wear protective masks as they meet with Democratic senators in the Oval Office. the White House in Washington on Wednesday, February 3rd. , 2021 to discuss Covid-19 stimulus relief.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. small business owners have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite two rounds of federal loan programs aimed at helping smaller businesses, most on Main Street continue to ask for more help.
Sixty-three percent of small business owners support the $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid package currently being driven by President Joe Biden’s administration and being debated in Congress, according to the latest quarterly poll of CNBC | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey.
This includes 46% of Republican small business owners who support the first major legislative proposal of the new Democratic administration. In fact, Biden’s relief package has far more Republican support than Biden’s. Only 14% of Republican small business owners say they approve of how Biden manages his job as president.
Support for more relief comes as confidence among small business owners fell to an all-time low since the quarterly follow-up survey began in 2017. The small business confidence index fell from 48 of the 100 possible in the fourth quarter of last year to 43 in that quarter. In addition, the number of small business owners who say they believe they can continue to operate for more than a year in current business conditions fell from 67% in the fourth quarter to 55%.
The CNBC Survey | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey for the first quarter of 2021 was conducted January 25-31 using the SurveyMonkey platform and included responses from 2,111 small business owners across the country.
The debate over more federal relief has become more partisan 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 what became 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, head of research sciences at SurveyMonkey. “When we submitted the last poll it was after the election, but it was still in that interim period where … there was still maybe a little bit of doubt in people’s minds [about the outcome]. I think people’s perceptions may have hardened, while in December they were a little more pending. Because this is the initial launch of the Biden administration, it becomes easier to say yes or no. “
Support for the last package may also have waned, Wronski says, due to the possibility of it including an increase in the federal minimum wage, a measure that is not normally popular among employers. The survey found that 54% of small business owners oppose raising the federal minimum wage to $ 15 per hour, while 44% support the increase.
Strong decline in Main Street business prospects
Overall, small business confidence was affected by a sharp drop in the number of small business owners who said overall business conditions are “good” (from 39% in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 29% this year). quarter), as well as large increases in the number of small business owners who expect possible changes in fiscal, trade, regulatory and even immigration policy in the next year to have a negative impact on their businesses, all largely the result of a “clash” of trust between Republican small business owners.
Wronski noted that a year ago, only 17% of Republicans said they expected government regulations to have a negative impact on their business. This quarter, that figure is 82%, essentially more than a year-on-year quadrupling. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2020, 40% of Democrats said they expected changes in regulation to have a negative impact on their businesses, and this quarter that number dropped to 12%. “This is a good example of how the increase in Democratic confidence is not able to offset the decline in Republican confidence. The magnitude is so different between the two groups in terms of how much they changed their perceptions year after year. “, he 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, 25 points lower than in the third quarter of 2020, the latest poll conducted before the election. It is also 9 points lower than the lowest confidence reading of small business owners during the Donald Trump presidency.
By contrast, confidence among small business owners who identify as Democrats has risen to 63, a 17-point increase over the pre-election poll.