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In October, 37 percent of U.S. small businesses were unable to pay all of their rent on time, according to an October survey of 4,789 businesses by Alignable, a small-business network with seven million members.
The proportion is up seven percentage points from September’s 30 percent and now stands at the highest rate this year.
Small businesses employ about half of U.S. workers in the private sector, Alignable noted.
Small business revenues are “basically being eaten away by inflationary pressures,” Charles Casto, Alignable’s research chief, told Bloomberg.
Rents have risen by at least 10 percent in the last six months for more than half the survey’s respondents, and one in seven report rent hikes of 20 percent or more.
Almost half of restaurants were unable to make all of their October rent, compared to 36 percent in September; 37 percent of real estate agencies fell behind, 10 percentage points more than the month before as rising interest rates and still-lofty prices squelched the housing market.
Vehicle dealerships and repair shops find it hard to get parts, one reason why half were unable to pay all of their October rent on time.
About a third of small businesses risk failing if revenues do not rise in the months ahead, Alignable said.
TREND FORECAST: Most small businesses have not yet recovered from the COVID War. Remember, in America—that degenerated from the “Land of Opportunity,” to the plantation of Slavelandia—when the COVID War was launched, politicians declared small businesses “non-essential”… and besides liquor stores, only the Bigs such as Amazon, Walmart, CVS, Target, Home Depot, etc., were allowed to do “business as usual.”
Tens of thousands of small businesses disappeared over the past two years. Thousands more will vanish in the next two, casualties of the COVID War and inflationary pressures that government stimulus overspending central banks’ inaction let loose.