Small Business Optimism Rises

August is a nice month.  Temperatures seem more bearable, kids are going back to school, and, at least this year, the economic outlook of small business owners is heading up.

We encountered some dark times during the past couple of periods, but Danita Blackwood reports, "The Discover Small Business Watch reached 86.9 in August, up 2.3 points from July and more than 15 points higher than June."

Compared to those old measurements, fewer small business owners now think the economy is getting worse, and more owners believe it’s getting better.  These changes left the optimists far below 100 percent in terms of strength, though, and there remain some problems in other categories.

The main one, as described by Blackwood: "42 percent say they have experienced cash flow issues over the last 90 days, a significant increase from 33 percent in July 2008."

This seems at odds with the numbers concerning the overall economy, unless some of the survey’s participants were drawing a line between their own businesses and everything else going on.  We’ll just have to hope the "good" stats influence the bad, and wait to see what happens next month.