Table Data - Small Business Credit Survey: Experienced at Least One Financial Challenge: Employer Firms

Title Small Business Credit Survey: Experienced at Least One Financial Challenge: Employer Firms
Series ID SBCSS10B0V0FRB
Source Federal Reserve Banks (Fed Small Business)
Release Small Business Credit Survey
Seasonal Adjustment Not Seasonally Adjusted
Frequency Annual
Units Percent
Date Range 2017-01-01 to 2025-01-01
Last Updated 2026-06-11 1:18 PM CDT
Notes The Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS) is an annual survey of firms with fewer than 500 employees that is fielded from approximately September through November each year. The SBCS is not a random sample; results should be analyzed with awareness of potential biases that are associated with convenience samples.

This series is based on the question: “Which of the following financial challenges, if any, has your business experienced during the past 12 months?” and is the share of firms that experienced at least one financial challenge in the 12 months prior to the fielding of the survey. Firms were classified as having exprienced a financial challenge based on having selected at least one response option from a list of response options or entering a separate challenge in the “other” field. The response options included, but were not limited to, “weak sales,” “paying business expenses,” “making payments on debt,” “uneven cash flow,” and “credit availability.” Response options presented in the question varied somewhat by survey year to reflect changing conditions. Comparable data for 2016 are not available.

See SBCS questionnaires for detailed information on the questions in the survey.
DATE VALUE
2017-01-01 64
2018-01-01 64
2019-01-01 66
2020-01-01 81
2021-01-01 85
2022-01-01 94
2023-01-01 93
2024-01-01 94
2025-01-01 94

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