Alignable’s January Small Business Rent Report is out today and while the overall national rent delinquency rate among U.S. small businesses improved from 40% in December to 30% in January, 56% of minority-owned small businesses were unable to cover January rent, up six percentage points from December.
This marks the highest rate among minority-owned small businesses since May 2022. This finding indicates that much more needs to be done on both the federal and state level to help more minority-owned businesses to rebound in 2023.
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This rent report is based on responses from 5,723 randomly selected small business owners polled from 12/31/22 to 1/30/23, along with past research surveying 100,000 other small business owners over the past 18 months. It includes charts like this one that show how different groups have been affected by rent challenges since the middle of 2022:
SMBs Can't Pay January Rent
Other key findings include:
- There’s a 24 percentage point difference between the 56% rate for minority-owned small businesses vs. the 32% rate among nonminority-owned small businesses. This statistic alone shows that disadvantaged small business communities need much more help than they're receiving currently.
- Several states saw better rent delinquency rates including NY, which has a rate of 35%, down 20 percentage points from 55% last month.
- However, rent delinquency rates increased for SMBs from Dec. to January in MI (39%, up 7%), GA (38%, up 16%), & IL (33%, up 1%).
- Many industries had better-than-usual rent delinquency rates, including travel/lodging (12%) & automotive (16%).
- But several are still suffering:
- 58% of beauty salons couldn’t pay January rent (up 14%)
- 49% of musicians/artists (up 19%)
- 42% of retailers &
- 38% of independent restaurant owners.
