The NFIB noted that the current month’s index was 8.3 points higher than the survey’s second lowest reading reached in March 2009; the lowest reading was 80.1 in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
However, “optimism has clearly stalled in spite of the improvements in the economy in the second half of 2009,” according to the press release, which is “indicative of the severity and pervasiveness of this recession.”<\/p>\n
The report said there was no improvement in the job creation statistics for January, as the government’s nonfarm payrolls report confirmed. The decline in the unemployment rate to 9.7% also squares with the NFIB forecast, which hasn’t anticipated a run up over 10%. Owners reported workforce reductions that average 0.52 workers per firm, basically unchanged for the past several months. About 9% of the owners surveyed increased employment by an average of 3.0 workers per firm, but 19% reduced employment an average of 3.9 workers per firm, seasonally adjusted.<\/p>\n
Owners complained that poor sales was their top problem, and said that there is no need to hire additional employees with no new customers.<\/p>\n
The report also showed that the frequency of reported capital outlays over the past six months rose three percentage points to 47% of all firms, an improvement from December’s record low reading, but historically very weak. Capital spending is on the sidelines, as is the demand for loans to finance these activities.<\/p>\n
Expectations for business conditions six months out faded, and very few owners felt that growth opportunities were solid enough to warrant expansion, only 5% in comparison to readings above 25% at the beginning of prior expansions. About 31% of owners said poor sales was their top business problem.<\/p>\n
The report also indicated that inflationary pressures were still tame, with the weak economy continuing to put downward pressure on prices. Just 11% of the owners reported raising average selling prices, while 27% reported average price reductions.<\/p>\n
Small-business owners in the first month of the new year remained pessimistic about the economy, according to a report released Tuesday. The Small Business Optimism Index has now posted seven quarterly readings below the 90 mark as small business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009: still downbeat on the economy. The index, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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