SpotlightDecember2020

Spotlight on Business Headlines

1 IN 4 AMERICANS WILL BE WORKING REMOTELY IN 2021 A ccording to Upwork’s “Future of Work- force Pulse Report” that surveyed 1,000 small business owners, HR managers and CEOs across a wide spectrum of industries nationwide in October and November of this year data shows that by 2025, 36.2 million Amer- icans will be working remotely, an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels. The survey comes at a time when remote work is increasingly a mainstay of American profession- al life, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the sudden shift to remote work has been an adjust- ment, the survey finds hiringmanagers are seeing the positive benefits to a distributed workforce and plan to continue leveraging remote talent.

COSTCO DOUBLING DOWN ON BRICK-AND-MORTAR, EVEN AS IT INVESTS IN E-COMMERCE C ostco CEO, Craig Jelinek recently told CNBC that the company’s physical stores will remain critical going forward, even though the wholesale retailer saw a surge in e-commerce sales during the coronavirus pan- demic. Costco had developed a reputation for its in-per- son shopping experience before the pandemic, but many Costco members have turned to its website this year, leading to strong online sales growth that many of its competitors also experi- enced. SMALL BUSINESS CONFIDENCE DROPS TO ALL-TIME LOW S mall business confidence has fallen to an all-time low after the election of former Vice President, Joseph Biden, according to the Q4 CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey. With a confidence index reading of 48, Main Street’s outlook is now below where it was during the second quarter of this year (49), when lockdowns across the nation were increasing amid the first wave of Covid-19. That Q2 number had been the all-time low previous to the just-completed survey, conduct- ed Nov. 10 to Nov. 17 among more than 2,200 small business owners nationally, using the Sur- veyMonkey platform.

INSTAGRAM GETS UPGRADED

Photo-sharing service Instagram recently announced that it’s bringing together two of its biggest priorities; online shopping and its new Reels short-form video feature, which competes with fast-growing social media network TikTok. Now businesses and creators can tag products when they’re creating a Reels video, and consumers can tap “view products” to buy them immediately or set them aside for later purchase. Bringing shopping into the video format aims to make Reels more engaging to consumers and more appeal- ing to creators. It could also make ads more effective by giving consumers an immediate way to purchase the advertised products, in turn allowing Facebook to charge more for them. Long term, it could also contribute to a new e-com- merce revenue stream for Facebook, which will even- tually take a fee from each transaction, although it’s waived fees through the end of the year to help small businesses through the Covid pandemic.

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DECEMBER 2020 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE

SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • DECEMBER 2020

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