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The Small Business Rent report from Alignable, which provides an online networking platform for owners, found that 43% of small businesses were unable to pay their rent in full due to economic headwinds. That's the highest rent delinquency rate since March 2021.
Independent restaurants are having the most trouble, with 52% not paying April rent on time. On the other hand, just 20% of small manufacturers are delinquent.
Comment: 'Just'...
More than half of small-business owners say that their rents are higher now than they were six months ago. Of those, 11% are paying at least 20% more than they did last fall.
Alignable found that fewer than a third of businesses founded prior to March 2020 are earning as much or more each month than they did before the pandemic. And among firms founded after the pandemic, 60% are making less than they did a year ago.
Increasing costs and declining revenues are hitting firms, according to the report. Some 34% say they only have one month or less cash on hand.
The survey of 4,171 small-business owners was conducted during the first three weeks of April.
Comment: Without some kind of windfall (such as foreign asset theft?) or miracle in funny money fed accounting, this situation is only likely to get worse; and, what with the US taxpayer signed up to a failing proxy-war in Ukraine, and now a genocide in Gaza, in addition to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants that have stepped across the border of late, it's likely that the economic situation will deteriorate fast.
Although this dire outlook - shared by governments across the West - might explain, in part, why the establishment is going all out with its agenda: