Economic resilience during COVID-19: An insight from permanent business closures

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has damaged the economy in the United States. To understand the resilience capacities of local businesses, we visualized the spatiotemporal patterns of permanently closed Points of Interest (POIs) after the outbreak of the pandemic. The results show that the counties with more business closures are also the counties with a larger population. The permanent closures of most local businesses occurred immediately after the lift of stay-at-home order. We also found that those business owners, who permanently shut down their businesses, may not open new ones elsewhere. In addition, the permanent closures of entertainment and recreation businesses are significantly less than that of retail and trade businesses and food services.