When Tech Ingenuity Buoyed Small Bus.

From lockdowns to layoffs, the COVID-19 pandemic has levied an enormous economic toll for more than a year. As scores of harrowing statistics reveal, COVID’s acute impact on American businesses and the workers they employ has been both material and manifest. Federal Reserve economists, for instance, recently found that the pandemic resulted in the permanent closure of roughly 200,000 more businesses than a typical year. Nationwide, the United States is still down 8 million jobs, and our two states of North Dakota and Georgia experienced job losses of 6.5% and 4.6% – as well as a 3.5% and 2.5% loss in GDP, respectively.