Small Businesses Continue to Suffer from Rent Inflation
By Mae Anderson
FILE - Retail spaces for lease are seen near Union Square in San Francisco, Feb. 27, 2024. Rent inflation is a pressure point for small businesses, according to new data from the Bank of America Institute. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Cost pressures continue to hurt small businesses.
In particular, rent inflation is a pressure point for small businesses, according to new data from the Bank of America Institute. The average monthly share of rent in total payments through May is 9.1%, up significantly from the 2019 average of 5.9%.
Some parts of the country have higher rents. In Las Vegas, for example, the average share of rent in May was more than double the national average.
But easing wage inflation has taken some pressure off of small businesses. Bank of America Institute found total nonfarm payroll growth remains strongest in the South. Payroll payments in cities like Charlotte and Tampa are over 30% higher than in 2019.
To calculate rent share, Bank of America analyzed internal data, specifically from small businesses that automatically pay rent out of their Bank of America accounts.
The average monthly rent payment growth per small business client was up 12% year-over-year in May. The rent payments per client closely track the nonresidential real estate rents component of the Producer Price Index, which suggests the increases are largely due to inflation rather than small businesses upgrading to bigger or better space.
Another bright spot from internal data: A metric called the inflow-to-outflow ratio, which Bank of America Institute views as a proxy for profits, rose in May and reached its highest level since March 2023. However, the ratio still remains on average lower than the past few years.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
