Business Owners Expect a Recession. They're Not Acting Like It.
Sixty percent of business owners say a recession before the end of 2026 is at least possible, according to our Mid-Year Pulse Check, a survey of 332 U.S. business owners fielded this summer. That's a meaningful share of the small business economy bracing for a downturn. It hasn't translated into a pullback.
Business Owners Are Proceeding, Not Retreating
68% of business owners say they're still moving forward with their plans, either as normal or more carefully, and only 6% report actively pulling back. Confidence about finishing the year strong sits at 70%. Whatever business owners believe about the broader economy, most of them are still building.
Funded Businesses Read the Economy Differently
A closer look at the data shows this split isn't evenly distributed. Businesses that have already taken working capital with Fora Financial are notably more likely to say no recession is coming at all: 38% say no, compared to 25% of businesses still weighing whether to seek financing. On the other side, 62% of the still-deciding group considers a recession at least possible, compared to 54% of already-funded businesses.
That gap is worth sitting with rather than explaining away. It's possible that resolving the cash flow and financing question removes one source of uncertainty from a business owner's outlook, making the rest of the picture look less threatening by comparison. It's also possible that businesses with a rosier read on the economy were simply more willing to take on financing in the first place. The data can't settle which direction the causation runs, and it likely runs both ways to some degree.
What the Data Means for Your Own Planning
What's not ambiguous is the behavior. Regardless of how any individual business owner reads the recession odds, the dominant response this year has been to proceed, carefully in most cases, but to proceed. If you're trying to get a read on how your peers are actually running their businesses this year, that's a more useful signal than the recession-probability number on its own.
Findings are drawn from Fora Financial's 2026 Mid-Year Pulse Check, an online survey of over 300 U.S. business owners fielded between late June and mid-July 2026. The customer/prospect comparison reflects 84 respondents identified as existing Fora Financial customers against the remaining 248 respondents, treated as the prospect cohort.
Since 2008, Fora Financial has distributed $5 billion to 55,000 businesses. Click here or call (877) 419-3568 for more information on how Fora Financial's working capital solutions can help your business thrive.
