Insights

Equipment finance approval rates reached 79.5 percent in June, and 80.7 percent on small ticket. With 2026 volume forecast at the highest level since the survey began in 2006, the constraint is cost per file, not credit appetite.

July housing starts fell 12.4 percent on the month and 13.5 percent on the year, with builder confidence at 35 for a sixteenth straight month. Sector exposure arrives as many separate problems.

Census data puts 51.8 percent of food manufacturing inventory in finished goods and 6.8 percent in work in process. The working capital is not tied up in production. It is tied up in everything that happens after production.

Accounting enrollment rose 8.9 percent to 205,180, a third straight increase. Graduates fell 6.6 percent and new CPA exam candidates dropped from 42,626 to 28,082 over the same stretch.

Insured institutions shed 27,662 full-time equivalents over a year while noninterest expense grew 10 percent. When cost rises as headcount falls, the expense is attached to the work rather than to the workforce.

July retail sales fell 0.6 percent against an expected rise, and categories ranged from minus 2.2 to plus 1.9 in the same month. Receipts are both the slowest signal a lender has and the least specific.

Employment in nondepository credit intermediation has fallen 22.3 percent from its 2021 peak and is still declining, while the share of small business applicants going to online lenders rose to 29 percent.

Across 509 professional services organizations, billable utilization fell to 66.4 percent, the lowest on record, while revenue growth improved and generative AI reached 27.1 percent of projects.