Just over one-third of Connecticut’s small businesses have closed their doors since January, according to a new report.
That means Connecticut has the sixth highest level of closure activity among all states.
Meanwhile, Connecticut small business revenue remains 39.3% below January levels, which is the 11th highest decline, according to Opportunity Tracker, which is a nonpartisan research and policy institute located at Harvard.
A team of Harvard and Brown University economists launched the tracker back in May, aiming to provide more immediate and location-specific insights into the economic effects of both the pandemic and resulting policy responses than can be gleaned through official economic datasets published by the federal government.
The tracker uses private-sector payment data provided by Womply, a Utah-based company that aggregates credit card processor data and provides services to small businesses across 26,000 U.S. zip codes.
It’s unknown if the closures are permanent or not. Opportunity Insights considers a business to be closed if Womply data shows three consecutive days with no credit card transactions.
In Hartford County, which is faring a bit better than other Connecticut counties for which tracker data was available, 24.5% of small businesses had closed their doors through November, compared to 41.6% in New London County, 37% in Fairfield County and 35.5% in New Haven County, according to the data.
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Hartford County small business revenue also hasn’t taken as big a hit, declining just 16% compared to more than 40% in each of the other three counties.