Small Business Trends Suggest No Economic Recovery On Horizon

Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010 Jan 14, 2010 - 12:07 PM
By: Mike_Shedlock

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Economic Trends http://www.nfib.com/Portals/0/PDF/sbet/sbet201001.pdf
for January 2010 is filled with 23 pages of graphs and text that suggest there is no recovery on the horizon.

Let's take a look at a summary and some of the graphs. Charts and text with permission of and copyright of the NFIB Research Foundation. Highlights in red are mine.

OPTIMISM INDEX

It has been a very difficult year and 2009 did not end on an uplifting note. The Index of Small Business Optimism lost 0.3 points, falling to 88.0 (1986=100), 7.0 points higher than the survey’s second lowest reading reached in March 2009 (the lowest reading was 80.1 in 1980). But optimism has clearly stalled in spite of the improvements in the economy since the first quarter of 2009.

LABOR MARKETS

The “job generating machineâ€