How Covid Affects Business in College Towns

Athens businesses continue to weather the pandemic shutdown, but jobs for students remain scarce.

In college towns, when classrooms sit empty, so do local businesses. As COVID-19 shut down the world, Athens, Georgia’s small businesses fought to stay alive. And some students who depend on those businesses for part-time employment struggled to replace lost jobs.

“And definitely with the games we don’t have any people traveling into town for football games that are coming because of the way that it was, or graduation. We always had a bunch of people related to the school come in,” said Emily Daniel, third generation owner of Tena’s Fine Diamonds. Emily said that the store’s proximity to campus has always been helpful, but the lack of UGA events since Covid began has taken a toll on the business.

“So definitely a lot just locals. And we also lost a lot of our foot traffic,” said Daniel.

College students often make up the majority of Tena’s part-time work, according to Daniel, and the lack of students on campus made it difficult to find employees.

As businesses make cut backs, many college seniors have struggled to find jobs.

“It was difficult, and resulted to creating my own job because of it,” said Wells Maley.

Maley skipped the job hunt following graduation in 2020 and went out on her own. She created her own apparel and home goods store called Swells of Splendor. It was a risk, but she’s only seen growth.

“Due to the difficult job market, I’ve decided to do that full time and see where it takes me because there’s been proven success thus far,” said Maley

Some students have been fortunate enough to find a job during this time fairly easily.

“Right now I work as a labor doula apprentice at Athens Born in Athens,” said senior Emily Doherty, “So I basically support women throughout pregnancy and childbirth.” She said that the job search was not difficult, but the job itself has been greatly impacted.

According to Doherty, “I’m not able to do any shadowing. So the people, the doulas, that I work for, I would have been able to shadow them in the hospital, but I’m not able to do that.”

Not every business has experienced such great change. Emery McCain is the content manager for Metal and Petal, an interior design store located just outside of downtown Athens. She spoke on the growing interior design market throughout the pandemic, and how staying at home has inspired locals to redesign their houses.

“Being an interior design firm our business has increased as people are staying at home and working more,” said McCain, “our storefront has been the same, we had to transition to online, but other than that it really hasn’t been affected.”

Students, locals, and small businesses have all been impacted by covid. Many students and businesses said they are all just working to support each other and keep Athens safe.