A surprising 22 per cent of firms in financial services “don’t know” the level of their “changes in revenue compared to the same time last year,” or so the latest insight from the ABS on Business Impacts of COVID-19 reports.
Incredibly, financial services enterprises (presumably a long tail of little-known names) self-report this uncertainty or ignorance at rates out of kilter with all other industries.
Among Accommodation and Food Services businesses (deeply affected by the pandemic and from early on) 10 per cent owned up to being in the dark.
For businesses overall in Australia, five per cent were hazy, the ABS said, and based on telephone surveys of 2000 firms only one week ago.
At the small end of town, businesses throttling down overall may be hanging in there, making use where they can of government support.
More than eight in 10 small business owners report that the JobKeeper subsidy has allowed them to continue trading, according to a separate survey commissioned by MYOB.
The latest MYOB Business Monitor shows that 68 per cent of businesses have suffered a fall in revenue because of COVID-19 and 24 per cent are looking at the prospect of shutting down.
More than half (52 per cent) expect their revenue to stay down by 20 per cent or more over the next three to six months.
Only 5 per cent expect their revenue to increase over the next three to six months, while 31 per cent expect their revenue to higher in 12 months.
Eighty-four per cent said they were able to continue operating because of JobKeeper.
MYOB economist Jon Manning said: “The impact of COVID-19 on the small business sector is hard to overstate.”