Small businesses have two common ways to survive a cash-flow crunch: borrow money or chase down unpaid bills. Both are getting less predictable at the same time. Small businesses are getting squeezed from two directions at once. It is harder to borrow your way through a cash-flow crunch, and it is riskier to trust whoever … Read more
Auto loans are the fastest-growing problem area in American household debt. Balances hit a record $1.713 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, and the share of balances seriously behind on payments is now the highest in the last 23 years. New auto loans also hit a nominal all-time high of $211 billion in Q2 … Read more
With 55% of U.S. B2B invoiced sales overdue, businesses need to collect unpaid bills without losing valuable customers. A harsh approach may recover one invoice but cost years of future business. Research from The Kaplan Group shows that respectful collection methods can improve cooperation, support payment, and protect customer relationships. The relationship is not separate … Read more
A new report by The Kaplan Group finds that American household debt remains near a record high. Total balances reached $18.77 trillion in Q2 2026, an increase of $382.5 billion from a year earlier and $567.5 billion since the company’s 2025 follow-up study. Although debt edged down by $13.5 billion from the previous quarter, the … Read more
Independent work is no longer just a side-gig phenomenon. It is increasingly being treated as a structured small-business path, especially in professional, creative, educational, and information-based sectors. A new report by The Kaplan Group analyzed two trend lines behind that shift: U.S. search interest, which is rising fastest for terms like “start freelancing” and “freelance … Read more
A shrinking, more expensive workforce under rising financial stress The U.S. debt collection industry is contracting at precisely the wrong moment. Over the past six years, the number of employed bill and account collectors has fallen by about 33%, based on BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. The sharpest drop came between 2023 and 2024, … Read more
Jobs are the clearest signal of economic health. Where they’re growing, money moves and invoices get paid; where they’re disappearing, financial distress and unpaid debt aren’t far behind. The Kaplan Group pulled together more than 90 statistics across the industries we know best, debt collection, staffing, marketing, SaaS, software, manufacturing, financial services, and distribution, to … Read more
At The Kaplan Group, we have long contended that unpaid invoices are not simply accounting problems. Yes, they represent cash flow gaps that can turn into hard writeoffs. But beneath these entries are relationship issues that must be resolved before back debt can be recovered. This insight drives every step we take in recapturing large … Read more
Marketing is growing twice as fast as the U.S. average. The catch is who agencies are hiring, and what it costs later. The standard warning about AI is that it comes for the jobs. In marketing, it came for the bottom of the job ladder instead. Overall marketing hiring has held up, but agencies are … Read more
AI has moved from an experiment to the defining operational shift in debt collection. Just two years ago, fewer than half of agencies had AI plans of any kind. Today, that number has inverted. A new report by The Kaplan Group draws from the most recent data to assess where AI stands in 2026 and … Read more
Wage‑and‑hour violations are happening less often, but they are costing companies much more. A new report by The Kaplan Group looks at federal data on low‑wage, high‑violation industries from Fiscal Year 2013 to 2025. It shows that the number of cases has gone down in the last five years. At the same time, the average … Read more
Running a business in 2025 and 2026 means navigating a minefield of rising costs, tighter credit, and customers who can’t pay on time. Nearly half of all U.S. business-to-business invoices are currently overdue and bankruptcy filings are surging past pre-pandemic levels. The outlook from small business owners is at its most pessimistic since 2020. A … Read more
Marketing and advertising agencies don’t just feel late payments on their own books. When large clients take months to pay, that debt pressure trickles down to the freelancers and contractors who do a growing share of the work. A new report by The Kaplan Group looks at how extended payment terms for agencies combine with … Read more
Staffing agencies have always lived with a timing problem: they pay workers weekly, then wait weeks or months to get paid by clients. When key client industries slow hiring, automate roles, or run into financial trouble, that timing gap quickly turns into a serious collections and cash‑flow risk. A new report by The Kaplan Group … Read more
Business bankruptcy filings in the U.S. have surpassed pre-pandemic levels. After bottoming out at 13,481 filings in 2022, annual business bankruptcies climbed to 24,737 by 2025. A new report by The Kaplan Group analyzes federal judiciary data from 2019 through 2025 to map where commercial bankruptcies are rising fastest. Key Takeaways National business bankruptcy trends … Read more
In 2025, U.S. goods trade expanded in both directions, with exports and imports growing compared with 2024, but imports rising more than exports. The annual goods deficit is slightly wider than the year before. A new report by The Kaplan Group examines when this shift happened, and which partners and product groups drove it. Key … Read more
Small businesses rarely fail because they lack ideas; they fail because they run out of cash. The Kaplan Group compiles 51 up‑to‑date data points on how often owners are juggling late customer payments, rising costs, and expensive debt just to keep the lights on. These numbers highlight the financial pressure points that can quickly turn … Read more
Marketing and advertising agencies are enjoying some of their strongest demand in years, but late-paying clients turn that growth into a persistent cash flow problem. A new report by The Kaplan Group combines two years of Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data, two decades of Google Trends demand signals, and the latest B2B payment research … Read more
What happens when 12.8M green card holders can’t get SBA loans? The Small Business Administration has issued new rules that shut lawful permanent residents out of its main small‑business loan programs, even if they own just 1% of a company. That shift could pull billions of dollars in affordable credit away from immigrant‑owned and mixed‑ownership … Read more
A new report by The Kaplan Group shows that temp help employment more than doubled between 1990 and its March 2022 peak, yet has since fallen by nearly one‑quarter. At the same time, online interest in “staffing agencies” and “temp work” is higher than ever, signaling curiosity and concern that don’t fully align with actual … Read more