Small businesses have taken big hits in the last couple of years.

In this week's Deep Dive, News 12's Kristie Reeter looks at the impacts that small businesses have on many aspects of our economy statewide.

Caleb Silver, with Investopedia, says they track small business employment by looking at hours worked. They look at the number of punch ins and punch outs by hourly employees at small businesses using data from Homebase, which is a data and analytics company.

New York state has suffered the most in terms of small business revenue and employment amid the pandemic. Working hours for small business employees is down 28.2% since pre-pandemic levels.

"Small businesses are crucial in New York State. There are over 2.3 million small businesses across the entire state, that is 99.3% of all businesses in the state, employing some 4.1 million workers so that's a lot of folks," says Silver.