Small Business: Recession — Yes? No?

Goldman Sachs just published an interesting survey. Interesting yes; surprising, no. The four time a year survey of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses participants found that 93% of small business owners now worry there is going to be a recession in the next six months.

A huge percentage — 78% — say the economy has gotten a lot worse in the last three months and 80% say inflationary pressures are increasing. Just 5% say things are better and that the economy is improving.

Hiring is getting harder for 84% of those surveyed.

Goldman Sachs says this is the first time inflation has come up in its quarterly survey. The 93% shocked those conducting the survey. Just 6% of the small businesses the bank talked with in the program aren’t worried about recession.

Many of the same businesses — 38% — are also worried about supply chain issues and say things are getting worse. An almost equal amount — 40% — say supply chain issues are the same and haven’t changed since the start of the pandemic. 

Advocacy efforts for the 10,000 Small Businesses training program are done by Joe wall. He says 38% of small businesses are seeing a decline in the demand for products because of price increases.

That’s a huge worry.

Of those same small businesses, 61% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. A year ago 67% of small businesses thought we were going the right direction and were quite optimistic. That was because the development of vaccines promised an end to the pandemic.

Those promises didn’t quite happen and small business now thinks things are doing downhill and fast.

Source link: Insurance Journal — https://bit.ly/3RJkP1L