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The food and accommodation sector had a high closure rate this year. (Photo courtesy Warchi/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Facebook released its 2020 U.S. Small Business Report, outlining the struggles that small businesses have had to face throughout the pandemic and citing the heaviest toll on the food and accommodation sector.

The report surveyed thousands of small business leaders and small business employees across ten different sectors, as well as consumers, about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected them in order to understand the challenges they’ve already faced and the hopes for recovery to come.

The food and accommodation sector had the highest closure rate out of the ten surveyed. The U.S. average rate of small business closures is currently 25 percent, while 35 percent of small businesses in this sector closed.

Furthermore, 62 percent of those surveyed in the food and accommodation sector reported a decrease in sales in 2020. Twenty-five percent reported sales reduced by more than 50 percent, while 37 percent reported sales reduced by less than 50 percent.

The majority of those surveyed believe it will take longer than six months to recover from the effects of the pandemic; the food and accommodation sector noted that cash flow and governmental regulations posed the greatest challenges to economic recovery. Only five percent of those surveyed in this sector reported demand as a factor.

Furthermore, businesses in minority communities have been disproportionately affected across all sectors. Seventy percent of small businesses in majority-minority communities (areas where minorities make up the majority of the population) reported a decrease in sales, as opposed to 41 percent in non-minority communities.