{"id":715314,"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.com\/index\/715314","title":{"rendered":"Small Businesses Still Ailing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Federation of Independent Business &#8212; the small-business lobbying organization &#8212; reports that small-business optimism <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfib.com\/Portals\/0\/PDF\/sbet\/sbet201003.pdf\">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 id=\"more-82069\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-82070\" href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/82069\/small-businesses-still-ailing\/screen-shot-2010-04-13-at-10-27-47-am\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-82070 alignnone\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-04-13 at 10.27.47 AM\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Screen-shot-2010-04-13-at-10.27.47-AM-480x295.png?resize=480%2C295\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"295\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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<p>The report comes just months after another, more comprehensive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nfib.com\/Portals\/0\/PDF\/AllUsers\/research\/studies\/Small-Business-Credit-In-a-Deep-Recession-February-2010-NFIB.pdf\">dismal report<\/a>, &#8220;Small Business Credit in a Deep Recession.&#8221; 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 &#8220;slow or declining&#8221; 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<p>Small businesses &#8212; which over the past 15 years have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/events\/2009\/1208_jobs_obama.aspx\">generated<\/a> nearly two-thirds of new jobs &#8212; continue to show low optimism and sustained difficulty accessing credit, despite the Obama administration&#8217;s efforts: more than $15 billion in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/business\/articles\/2009\/03\/17\/obama_unveils_small_business_loans_program\/\">loan guarantees<\/a> through the Small Business Administration, $33 billion in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/01\/29\/AR2010012900854.html\">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 <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123665146189479561.html\">concerted<\/a> effort to ensure the flow of credit to small businesses for more than a year now &#8212; but many programs remain in plenary stages, and thus far, they have evidently had little effect. For months, the NFIB has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/money\/business-economy\/small-business\/articles\/2010\/03\/25\/how-a-payroll-tax-holiday-affects-small-businesses.html\">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":"<p>The National Federation of Independent Business &#8212; the small-business lobbying organization &#8212; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-305k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}