Best Small Cities to Start a Business in South Dakota

The ongoing COVID-19 situation continues to take a toll on businesses across the country. Small businesses have been hit particularly hard. Recent statistics have indicated that an astounding and heartbreaking number of small businesses have gone under.

WalletHub researchers discovered through their Coronavirus Small Business Survey that over 100,000 small businesses have closed permanently since the beginning of the pandemic. This was in spite of government stimulus efforts to help them stay alive.

The closing of these businesses has caused a wide range of ripple effects. According to the International Labour Organization, worldwide 114 million people lost their jobs.

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With the introduction of the vaccines, surviving businesses are struggling to move forward even with the easing of some restrictions. The proof came by the pageful in WalletHub's latest study.

Some of their findings:

• The recovery process will be long and painful. 50 million small business owners said it would take longer than a year for their businesses to come back from the pandemic.
• 56% of small business owners said that re-opening the economy is less important than it is to minimize COVID-19 deaths. In fact, 23% think there should be more, not fewer restrictions, even in the face of a failing business.
• Two-thirds of small business owners said that last year (2020) was the most difficult year in business.
• Because of the devasting effects of the pandemic 61 million small business owners said they regretted ever starting a business.

With all this information in their possession, they then went on a search for the best small towns to start a business in. These towns had to be under 100,000 citizens, so Sioux Falls didn't make the cut, but two other South Dakota towns did, and they were pretty high up on the list.

Aberdeen scored very well, landing in 6^th position and Rapid City came in 31^st on this list.

To make these determinations, WalletHub considered factors like; labor costs, length of workweeks, startups per capita, revenue per business, industry variety, education of the workforce, and more.

To see the complete report, go to WalletHub.

Sources: WalletHub and International Labour Organization