MALIBU, Calif.— Small and mid-sized businesses are having a harder time getting credit, and that in turn is affecting their plans to hire, a new study reveals.
Those are findings of a quarterly survey of small businesses released by Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management and Dun & Bradstreet Corp.
The third-quarter survey questioned 752 small and mid-sized businesses, with some of the results broken out by company size.
Companies of all sizes said it was harder to get loans; 59% said it was difficult to get debt financing, up from 56% in a survey in the second quarter.
Twenty-eight percent of small businesses reported success in getting bank loans during the previous three months, down from 31.6% in the second quarter. Mid-sized companies also had a tougher time, with 75% reporting they could get bank loans, down from nearly 90%.
Hiring expectations are slightly lower, with 30% of all companies not expecting to add jobs, up from 28% in the second quarter, according to the survey.