Nearly two-thirds of small-business owners — 64% — have reduced or skipped their own pay to keep their businesses running, according to a national survey published by Black Enterprise and conducted by the advocacy group Small Business for America's Future. The survey ran from Aug. 13 through Oct. 5, 2026, and drew responses from 1,171 small-business owners in the organization's network.
The owner's paycheck is usually the last bill a small operation pays and the first one cut. That is what makes this number a useful gauge: when 64% of owners are trimming their own pay, the squeeze is not at the margins of the sector. It is at the center. The survey also found 47% of owners said their businesses no longer adequately cover their living expenses, and 83% expressed concern about their financial stability over the next 12 months.
This explainer unpacks what the survey found, why owners absorb costs personally before cutting anywhere else, and what the numbers say about the broader pressures on Main Street. For more coverage in this vein, see the publication's small-business section.
What exactly did the survey find?
The headline figure is the pay cut: 64% of respondents reported reducing or skipping their own pay to keep the business running. Behind it sit several supporting numbers. Among owners who said business conditions had worsened, 85% cited inflation and rising prices. Across all respondents, 78% said higher costs had affected their ability to operate or expand, and 72% said running a business has become more difficult over the past year.
Three out of four owners surveyed said the current economy is among the most difficult of their careers, with many comparing the financial strain to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession. That comparison comes from the respondents themselves, not from the survey's sponsors, and it signals how owners rate this stretch against downturns they have already lived through.
Why do owners cut their own pay first?
Owner pay is the one expense with no contract, no payroll tax notice to employees, and no vendor to call. Cutting it does not touch staffing, inventory, or rent. In practice, the owner's draw — the payment an owner takes from the business — acts as a shock absorber: when revenue dips or costs jump, the draw shrinks before anything else does.
The survey shows how far that absorption goes. Beyond the 64% who cut or skipped pay, 47% said the business no longer covers their living expenses. One respondent put the stakes plainly. "To keep my business afloat, I invested my 401(k) savings and leveraged my home equity as collateral for additional capital, putting my family's financial security on the line to sustain my business and employees," said Gabe Hagen, founder of Brick Road Community Corporation, an Arizona-based coffee roasting company.
That pattern — personal savings and home equity pledged to keep a business alive — is why the pay figure matters more than it first appears. It is a measure of how much household balance sheets are quietly underwriting the small-business economy. Owners weighing how much cash a business should hold against household needs can start with the question of how many months of expenses a business should hold in cash. We covered a connected angle in How Many Months of Expenses Should a Business Hold in Cash?.
Which pressures are driving the squeeze?
The survey points to three forces working at once:
- Costs. Among owners reporting worsening conditions, 85% cited inflation and rising prices. Separately, 59% of all respondents said tariffs have made daily operating expenses harder to afford.
- Demand. 46% of owners reported that their customers are spending significantly less.
- Policy uncertainty. 67% of owners reported delaying, canceling, or reducing growth investments, and 57% scaled back hiring plans, citing federal policy uncertainty.
Read together, the sequence is familiar to anyone who has run a payroll: costs rise, customers pull back, and the owner responds by freezing the two decisions with the longest consequences — hiring and investment — and by trimming the one expense that answers to no one else. Owners rethinking how to pass costs along can look at how to reprice a product when costs won't hold still, and those weighing their next hire against the numbers can review the real cost of a first hire, itemized.
How do owners view Washington's role?
The survey also measured a political sentiment: 78% of respondents believe Washington prioritizes the needs of large corporations over small businesses. That finding sits alongside the policy-uncertainty numbers — the 67% who delayed growth investments and the 57% who scaled back hiring — and helps explain why so many owners describe this period as uniquely hard. It is not only the level of costs; it is the difficulty of planning around rules that may change.
The survey's sample — 1,171 owners drawn from Small Business for America's Future's own network — is worth noting when weighing the results. Network surveys capture the views of engaged owners rather than a random national sample, which is a standard caveat for advocacy-group polling and one reason to treat the figures as a strong directional signal rather than a census.
What should an owner take from these numbers?
The useful takeaway is diagnostic, not dramatic. If nearly two in three owners are cutting their own pay, an owner doing the same is in a large company — but the survey also shows what tends to follow: retirement savings drawn down, home equity pledged, and living expenses left uncovered by the business. The numbers that matter for any individual operation are the ones on its own ledger — what costs have moved, what customers are spending, and what the owner's draw actually covers. The survey gives the sector-wide context for those private decisions; it cannot make them.
