Bank holidays for some but not for single parent business owners

With the nation gearing up for May’s final bank holiday, our new research suggests that a significant number of small business owners, many of whom also happen to be single parents, will in fact be working through this period.

In fact, single parent business owners are 20% more likely say they won’t be having any time off, with two in five saying they always work on a bank holiday.

Almost half (48%) say they must occasionally.

When asked how many hours single parent business owners worked in a standard week, they were the group most likely to putting in more hours than the average business owner (63% vs. 60%) while one in ten said they worked a 50-hour week.

Why are they working?

While more than a third said they needed to get on with core work for the business, one in five said they needed to chase clients on issues such as outstanding invoices, compared to 12% for other SME owners generally.

(The research was conducted by Maru/blue among a representative sample size of 1,466 small business owners, including a sample of 389 single parents. The fieldwork was undertaken in February 2020).