Survey: Small biz owners growing more pessimistic

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Small busi­ness own­ers are grow­ing more pessimistic.

A sur­vey released Tues­day by the National Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness shows that own­ers became more pes­simistic dur­ing Sep­tem­ber as employ­ment and sales remained weak. The NFIB’s index of owner opti­mism fell 0.1 point to 92.8.

The sur­vey did have some bright spots. The num­ber of own­ers who believe this is a good time to expand their com­pa­nies rose 3 per­cent­age points. And the num­ber of own­ers who expect busi­ness con­di­tions to improve in six months gained 4 points.

But the num­ber of owner who plan to cre­ate jobs fell 3 points, while the num­ber who plan to reduce their pay­rolls rose 2 points. More than a fifth of the survey’s par­tic­i­pants said weak sales are their biggest busi­ness problem.

The sur­vey is in line with other small busi­ness read­ings that show own­ers are cau­tious. The pay­roll ser­vice com­pany ADP said last week that small busi­nesses slowed their pace of hir­ing dur­ing Sep­tem­ber. There have been mixed read­ings on how much own­ers are will­ing to bor­row, but the con­flict­ing sig­nals do point to small com­pa­nies being very care­ful about spend­ing for hir­ing or expansion.

One rea­son why the NFIB sur­vey showed that more own­ers expect busi­ness to improve: The pres­i­den­tial elec­tion will be decided and Con­gress is likely to have taken action on tax bills. That would remove some of the uncer­tainty that has con­tributed to own­ers’ pes­simism the past few months.

The NFIB ques­tioned nearly 700 of its mem­bers as part of its survey.

Posted by AP News on Oct 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.