What the Fed's 2026 Small Business Credit Survey Reveals About Main Street
The Federal Reserve Banks' 2026 Main Street Metrics report, drawn from the annual Small Business Credit Survey, now tracks eleven key indicators of small business health going back to 2016 — giving owners and researchers the longest consistent dataset available on employer-firm conditions nationwide.
The 2025 edition of the underlying survey, fielded between September and November 2025, drew 6,525 responses from small employer firms with one to 499 employees across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. That scale makes it one of the most representative pictures available of how owners with actual payroll — not solo freelancers — are experiencing credit access, business conditions, and financial health.
The survey arrives as other 2026 data sources show a mixed lending backdrop: Equifax's small business lending index rose 10.8% month-over-month in April even as it remained down year-over-year, and loan defaults stayed above pre-pandemic levels without signaling broad deterioration, according to Equifax's June 2026 report.
For a prospective owner, the takeaway from a decade of consistent credit-survey data is less about any single year's number and more about the pattern: small employer firms have weathered repeated rate cycles, and credit access — while never simple — has remained available to well-prepared applicants throughout.