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Eighty-five percent of businesses temporarily closed during pandemic have reopened in milestone for recovery, Yelp says

The vast majority of businesses that temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic have reopened, according to a new Yelp report.

Eighty-five percent of the businesses that shuttered from March 2020 through the third quarter are up and running, Yelp said, citing data on enterprises listed on its popular customer review site.

“For a vast majority of those businesses to reopen during the pandemic is a true testament to the perseverance and adaptability of those business owners,” says Justin Norman, Yelp’s vice president of data science.

The milestone is a measure of the strides the economy has made during the recovery from the health crisis and recession, though it doesn’t fully capture the struggles many businesses continue to endure. Many restaurants, shops and other outlets still aren’t running at full capacity amid workers shortages and volatile consumer demand due to recent COVID spikes triggered by the delta variant.

In September 2020, Yelp said 163,735 businesses indicated on its website they had closed, including nearly 98,000 permanently. The company has not updated that figure more recently.

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The reopenings cited by Yelp Wednesday include 83% of restaurants and food concerns; 83% of nightlife businesses; 86% of auto, professional, home and local services; 86% of hotels and travel firms; and 90% of beauty outlets.

States forced many businesses temporarily shut down in the early days of the pandemic to curtail the outbreak, and many others remained closed for longer periods because of weak customer demand or employees’ health concerns.

Yelp also said Wednesday that 439,094 new businesses opened the first nine months of this year, based on its data, topping the 433,243 that launched in 2019, before the pandemic began.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US economy: Most businesses temporarily shut in pandemic have reopened