U.S. small businesses are lagging behind their corporate counterparts when it comes to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a new survey from Salesforce, over half of small businesses missed out on growth opportunities due to staff shortages, with many of these same businesses reporting an 11% drop in revenue over the past 6 months.

Unlike big businesses, small and medium-sized businesses are not able to keep up with rising labor costs.

Small business owners who have been hanging on by a thread, waiting for the pandemic to pass, have been dealt another blow by the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus.

As big corporations continue to keep workers at home instead of in the office, small businesses like shops, cafes, and retailers won’t see the normal amount of foot traffic that they’re counting on to drive up revenue.

A quick shift toward certain types of technology, coupled with large-scale government investments has caused many economists to predict that the United States is about to see a big boom in productivity.

The boom doesn’t necessarily involve U.S. workers, however, as many companies have begun adopting robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a means to supplement the workforce.