--- url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-resilience-back-to-normal-by-trade/' title: 'Resilience by Trade: Two Years In, 60.6% of Finance Firms Were Back or Barely Touched. At Hotels and Restaurants, 26.8%' author: name: Samantha Lankford url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/author/sam/' date: '2026-11-05T10:30:00-05:00' modified: '2026-11-05T10:30:00-05:00' type: post summary: 'By early 2022, 60.6% of small finance employers said they were back to normal or had seen little effect. Hotels and restaurants: 26.8%.' categories: - Blog Post image: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/founder-resilience-back-to-normal-by-trade-hero.webp' published: true --- # Resilience by Trade: Two Years In, 60.6% of Finance Firms Were Back or Barely Touched. At Hotels and Restaurants, 26.8% ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png)Founder Data Report ![Resilience by Trade: Two Years In, 60.6% of Finance Firms Were Back or Barely Touched. At Hotels and Restaurants, 26.8%](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/founder-resilience-back-to-normal-by-trade-hero.webp) Founder Data Report # Resilience by Trade: Two Years In, 60.6% of Finance Firms Were Back or Barely Touched. At Hotels and Restaurants, 26.8% By Michael Dermer • Updated November 5, 2026 Join us Fridays at 12 PM ET to ask TLE CEO Michael Dermer your questions live. [Join the CEO Call →](https://shorturl.at/364XX) Resilience looks different depending on what you sell. Two years after the 2020 shock, Census asked small employers how far they were from normal, and the answer split by trade. Quick Answer In the Census Bureau’s Small Business Pulse Survey for February to April 2022, **60.6%** of small finance and insurance employers said their business had returned to normal or had seen little or no effect. At accommodation and food services it was **26.8%**. All small employers: 41.2%. In finance, more owners said little or no effect than said returned. In health care and the arts, it ran the other way. When owners talk about resilience, they tend to talk about themselves: how hard they worked, what they refused to give up. Some of that is real. But the Census Bureau spent two years asking small employers one plain question, how long until this business is back to normal, and the answers differ sharply by trade. That matters when you are measuring yourself against someone in a different line of work. Across all small employers in the last phase of the survey, 21.6% said they had returned to normal and 19.7% said there had been little or no effect. Those two answers read very differently once you look inside each trade. The 30-second version - Back to normal or barely touched, February to April 2022: 60.6% in finance and insurance, 55.5% in real estate, 26.8% in accommodation and food services. - Those are two different routes. In finance, 36.1% reported little or no effect and 24.5% reported a return. In health care, 11.0% and 26.3%. - Hotels and restaurants had the lowest little-or-no-effect share at 5.7%, clear of all 14 other trades. - Saying they did not believe the business would ever return to normal: 16.4% in repair and personal services, 7.8% in finance. - These are owners’ own judgments of normal, at single-location employers. The survey does not say why the trades differ. ## How far each trade was from normal Add the two answers that mean the disruption is over or never came, and the trades run from 60.6% down to 26.8%. Finance and insurance stands clear of the other 14 trades shown. Accommodation and food services is lowest, clear of every trade except educational services at 30.9%. Real estate is second at 55.5%, then professional and technical services at 49.8%. Only six of the 15 trades sit above the all-employer figure of 41.2%. The Data Back to normal or little or no effect, by trade, February to April 2022 Finance and insurance60.6%Real estate and rental55.5%Professional and technical services49.8%Administrative and support services45.0%Construction44.1%Information42.4%Transportation and warehousing39.5%Retail trade38.2%Manufacturing37.6%Health care and social assistance37.3%Arts, entertainment and recreation37.1%Repair, personal and other services34.9%Wholesale trade33.6%Educational services30.9%Accommodation and food services26.8% Share of small employers giving either answer. Bars on a 0 to 70% axis. Utilities, mining, agriculture and management of companies are left out, where rows are suppressed or margins are wide. U.S. Census Bureau, Small Business Pulse Survey, Phase 8 (nine weekly rounds, Feb. 14 to Apr. 17, 2022), by sector: ‘how much time do you think will pass before this business returns to its normal level of operations?’ Means of nine weekly panels. Nonfarm, single-location employers with 1 to 499 employees. ## Barely touched is not the same as came back In finance and insurance, real estate and professional services, more owners said little or no effect than said returned: 36.1% against 24.5% in finance. Little or no effect describes a disruption that did not arrive at the door, and more of these owners gave that answer. Health care and the arts read the other way. 26.3% of health care employers and 25.0% of arts employers said they had returned to normal, the top two on that answer, while only 11.0% and 12.1% said little or no effect. Hotels and restaurants take the same shape at a lower level: 21.1% returned, 5.7% little or no effect. On the returned answer alone, that is level with retail and manufacturing. It is the barely-touched share that puts the trade last. > Only 5.7% of hotel and restaurant employers said the shock had little or no effect. In finance, 36.1%. The Data Two routes to the same place: returned to normal against little or no effect Finance and insurance Returned to normal24.5% Little or no effect36.1% Real estate and rental Returned to normal23.9% Little or no effect31.6% Professional and technical services Returned to normal22.5% Little or no effect27.3% Construction Returned to normal19.3% Little or no effect24.8% Retail trade Returned to normal21.3% Little or no effect16.9% Health care and social assistance Returned to normal26.3% Little or no effect11.0% Arts, entertainment and recreation Returned to normal25.0% Little or no effect12.1% Accommodation and food services Returned to normal21.1% Little or no effect5.7% Share of small employers giving each answer, February to April 2022. Both bars on one scale, 0 to 100%. Eight of the 15 trades shown. U.S. Census Bureau, Small Business Pulse Survey, Phase 8 (nine weekly rounds, Feb. 14 to Apr. 17, 2022), by sector: ‘how much time do you think will pass before this business returns to its normal level of operations?’ Means of nine weekly panels. Nonfarm, single-location employers with 1 to 499 employees. The clock moved too. In August to October 2020, 4.2% of hotel and restaurant employers and 4.2% of arts employers said they had returned to normal, against 14.8% in construction. By early 2022 hotels and restaurants read 21.1% and arts 25.0%, and construction 19.3%. The order had flipped. The survey changed its sample twice between those points and dropped a few words from the question, so read the direction, not the exact size of the move. ## Who said normal was never coming back Across all small employers, 12.2% said they did not believe the business would return to its normal level. Repair and personal services had the highest share at 16.4%, level with transportation at 15.0% and clear of retail at 14.9%. Finance at 7.8% and real estate at 8.0% are at the bottom, level with each other. The arts are the one to look at twice. They sit well below hotels and restaurants on this answer, 9.0% against 14.7%, even though both read 4.2% returned in late 2020. And wholesale and education are at the top on the answers that put normal furthest off. In wholesale, 39.0% said more than six months and 14.4% said never, 53.4% between them, level with education at 52.2%. In finance it was 29.1%. The Data Did not believe the business would return to normal, by trade, February to April 2022 Repair, personal and other services16.4%Transportation and warehousing15.0%Retail trade14.9%Accommodation and food services14.7%Wholesale trade14.4%Information14.3%Educational services12.7%Health care and social assistance12.3%Administrative and support services12.2%Manufacturing11.2%Construction10.3%Professional and technical services10.1%Arts, entertainment and recreation9.0%Real estate and rental8.0%Finance and insurance7.8% Share of small employers. Bars on a 0 to 20% axis. Repair and transportation do not separate from each other; finance and real estate do not separate from each other. U.S. Census Bureau, Small Business Pulse Survey, Phase 8 (nine weekly rounds, Feb. 14 to Apr. 17, 2022), by sector: ‘how much time do you think will pass before this business returns to its normal level of operations?’ Means of nine weekly panels. Nonfarm, single-location employers with 1 to 499 employees. ## What to take from this if you run one Compare yourself with your own trade before you judge how you came through a bad stretch. A restaurant owner measuring against an insurance agency is not measuring resilience. The same goes for the insurance agency owner who takes credit for a storm that hit that trade less often. And decide what normal means before someone else defines it for you. About one small employer in eight had stopped expecting the old level to come back. If that is you, the useful question is what the business looks like at the level it actually runs at now, and that conversation goes better with someone who has run a business through a hard stretch and has no stake in your answer. Limits worth holding. These are **owners’ own judgments** of what normal is, and the survey never defines it. It covers **single-location employers** with 1 to 499 employees, so chains and owners working alone are not in it. From August 2021 the sample also left out firms with inactive payroll accounts, so some closed firms are not counted, and trade is **not separated from firm size**. It is one shock, and the survey does not say why these trades differ. The Data Where the numbers land 60.6% of small finance and insurance employers were back to normal or had little or no effect 26.8% of small accommodation and food services employers said the same 5.7% of hotel and restaurant employers reported little or no effect, the lowest of 15 trades 16.4% of repair and personal services employers did not expect normal to return U.S. Census Bureau, Small Business Pulse Survey, Phase 8, Feb. to Apr. 2022. ## Frequently Asked Questions Which small businesses recovered from the pandemic fastest? The survey shows levels, not speed. By February to April 2022, 60.6% of small finance and insurance employers said they were back to normal or saw little or no effect, the highest of 15 trades. Accommodation and food services was lowest at 26.8%. Did restaurants recover more slowly than other businesses? They started lower. In August to October 2020, 4.2% said they had returned to normal. By early 2022 it was 21.1%, level with retail and manufacturing on that answer. Few said little or no effect: 5.7%. How many small businesses thought they would never get back to normal? 12.2% of small employers in February to April 2022, from 7.8% in finance to 16.4% in repair and personal services. What does normal mean in this survey? The survey does not define it. Each owner answered about the business's normal level of operations as they saw it, so these are judgments, not measured output. Where does the data come from? The U.S. Census Bureau's Small Business Pulse Survey, 72 weekly rounds from April 2020 to April 2022, covering nonfarm, single-location employers with 1 to 499 employees. Figures here are means of the nine weekly panels in each phase. Keep reading - [Two Years Into the Pandemic, 12.2% of Small Employers Said They Would Never Get Back to Normal. In 2020 It Was 7.4%](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-normal-that-never-came/) - [Resilience Measured in Weeks: In Late 2020, 34.6% of Small Employers Had Less Than a Month of Cash on Hand](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-resilience-in-weeks/) - [Resilience by Trade: When Setbacks Hit, How Many Lost Jobs Go With a Business That Closed? In Restaurants, More Than One in Four](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-resilience-setbacks-by-trade/) Part of the entrepreneurial struggle: [Resilience](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-struggle/resilience/) ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png) Published by **The Lonely Entrepreneur** — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. [lonelyentrepreneur.com](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/) This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.