{"id":525899,"date":"2010-04-13T10:57:31","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82069"},"modified":"2010-04-13T10:57:31","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:57:31","slug":"small-businesses-still-ailing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/525899","title":{"rendered":"Small Businesses Still Ailing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Federation of Independent Business — the small-business lobbying organization — reports that small-business optimism declined<\/a> in February. Small businesses reported smaller workforces and continued price cutting, among other sluggish stats. This chart encapsulates the continued bad times:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The yawning gap on the right side of the chart shows that while small businesses continue to expect improved sales, actual sales remain at historical lows.<\/p>\n

The report comes just months after another, more comprehensive dismal report<\/a>, “Small Business Credit in a Deep Recession.” It shows that, despite the lifting of the recession, as of February, small businesses have less access to credit than they did a year ago. The percentage of small businesses holding a loan has fallen 20 percent year-on-year. More than half of small businesses cite “slow or declining” sales as a major issue, up eight percent from one year ago. And only 40 percent of small businesses attempting to borrow had all of their needs met.<\/p>\n

Small businesses — which over the past 15 years have generated<\/a> nearly two-thirds of new jobs — continue to show low optimism and sustained difficulty accessing credit, despite the Obama administration’s efforts: more than $15 billion in loan guarantees<\/a> through the Small Business Administration, $33 billion in tax breaks<\/a> for new hiring and increased loans to small businesses through the multi-billion-dollar Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF. The administration has made a concerted<\/a> effort to ensure the flow of credit to small businesses for more than a year now — but many programs remain in plenary stages, and thus far, they have evidently had little effect. For months, the NFIB has advocated<\/a> a payroll tax holiday to gin up hiring. But that measure remains controversial and unmentioned by the White House and Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Federation of Independent Business — the small-business lobbying organization — reports that small-business optimism declined in February. Small businesses reported smaller workforces and continued price cutting, among other sluggish stats. This chart encapsulates the continued bad times: The yawning gap on the right side of the chart shows that while small businesses continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525899","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\/6662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}