Office Depot Survey Speaks To Low Hiring, Loan Numbers

If the latest Office Depot Small Business Index is correct, it could be quite some time before the average small business does a significant amount of hiring – or receives much money from banks.  A new report relayed some fairly decisive figures on those subjects.

To first establish the significance and timeliness of the data: Office Depot conducted 1,001 surveys between August 30th and September 3rd among what was supposed to be "a nationally representative sample of Small and Medium Sized Businesses."

As for the hiring numbers, Office Depot said in a statement, "81 percent of respondents stated that they had no plans to hire within the next six months, citing reasons such as higher healthcare costs (18%), fear of higher taxes in 2011 (15%), lack of available credit (14%), and continued economic uncertainty (14%)."

Then, with respect to loans, the statement continued, "78% of respondents stated that they foresee it becoming even more difficult to obtain a bank loan in the near future."

That all sounds pretty negative.  It could be worse, though (consider that small businesses could be giving their current employees raises and not seeking loans).  And Office Depot determined that 56 percent of small business owners expect their profits to increase in the next six months, which is good.

Let’s hope good news continues to turn up since the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the recession over yesterday.