I still remember the day my neighbor closed his hardware store for good. Thirty-two years in the same location, gone overnight. He didn’t retire with a smile and a fishing rod—he walked out with a cardboard box and a look I’ll never forget. That was back in March. Since then I’ve watched the same story play out across town after town, and the numbers now confirm what my eyes have been telling me: businesses in America are going under at a terrifying speed.
A Wave Unlike Anything Since the Great Recession
We aren’t talking about the usual churn of a healthy economy. This is different. Through the first seven months of 2025, large public and private companies filed 446 bankruptcy cases—the highest January-to-July total since 2010. July alone saw 71 major filings, the worst single month since the summer of 2020 when the world was locked down.
And it’s not just the giants. Small businesses—the ones that actually create most new jobs—are getting absolutely crushed. A special fast-track bankruptcy option created six years ago for the smallest firms just recorded its busiest year ever. Over 2,200 cases in 2025 and counting. Court trustees in places like South Florida say creditors are “breathing down their necks” with no mercy and no room left to maneuver.
Honestly, when I first saw those numbers I had to sit down for a minute. I knew things were rough, but this rough?
Why Now? The Perfect Storm Nobody Wants to Talk About
Interest rates stayed higher for longer than most businesses could survive. Many companies that loaded up on cheap debt during the pandemic years suddenly faced payments they simply couldn’t make when the bills came due in 2024 and 2025. Add crushing inflation on everything from insurance to electricity, and the math stopped working.
Then came the consumer pullback. People who burned through savings during the lockdown era are now tapped out. Discretionary spending has fallen off a cliff, and the businesses that depend on it—restaurants, retail, entertainment, fitness centers—are dropping like flies.
“Creditors are just breathing down their necks. There’s nowhere left to hide.”
— Bankruptcy trustee handling dozens of South Florida cases
The Human Cost Nobody Sees on a Spreadsheet
Every bankruptcy filing is more than a legal document. It’s someone’s dream evaporating. It’s employees who thought they had stable jobs suddenly updating résumés at 2 a.m. It’s suppliers who won’t get paid and will probably file their own bankruptcy six months later.
I talked to a friend who graduated college this spring with a solid engineering degree. He told me something that stopped me cold: out of his entire friend group—smart kids, good schools, internships under their belts—not a single one has landed a full-time job yet. Not one.
Think about that for a second. An entire generation did exactly what they were told—study hard, get the degree, hustle—and the reward is… nothing. They’re competing against foreign contractors willing to work for half the salary and against software that never sleeps, never calls in sick, and doesn’t need health insurance.
Artificial Intelligence Is Eating Entry-Level Jobs Alive
We keep hearing that AI will “create more jobs than it destroys.” Maybe someday. Right now? A comprehensive study out of MIT looked at 151 million American workers and concluded that current-generation AI could already automate the tasks of more than 20 million people if companies decided to pull the trigger tomorrow.
That’s 11.7 percent of the entire labor force. And guess which jobs are going first? The exact entry-level and mid-level white-collar positions that used to be the first rung on the ladder for millions of young adults.
- Junior data analysts replaced by automated dashboards
- Customer support roles swallowed by chatbots
- Basic legal research handed to algorithms
- Marketing copy written in seconds instead of days
- Even software testing increasingly automated
I’m not anti-technology—far from it—but the speed of this transition is brutal. A woman I know lost her tech job in the February Meta cuts. Nine months later she’s still looking. Her severance is gone, savings are gone, and the “low performer” label (real or not) follows her like a shadow. These are real lives turned upside down.
When Even Full-Time Work Isn’t Enough
Here’s the part that keeps me up at night: millions of people who still have jobs can’t afford basic housing. Recent data show the typical retail worker earns about $34,400 a year. To comfortably rent the average apartment in America today you need roughly $71,000. Do that math.
That gap explains why so many young adults are moving back home, living in vans, or cramming three roommates into a one-bedroom. The middle-class lifestyle our parents took for granted feels like ancient history to anyone under 35.
Meanwhile, the Top Keeps Getting Richer
Perhaps the most infuriating piece of this puzzle is what’s happening at the very top. While regular companies collapse and workers scramble, the wealthiest Americans have added trillions to their net worth since the pandemic began. The top 0.1 percent—households worth at least $46 million—have nearly doubled their wealth to over $23 trillion.
The contrast is stark and impossible to ignore. On one side: boarded-up storefronts and desperate job hunters. On the other: private jets, third vacation homes, and stock portfolios hitting new highs almost daily. No wonder anger is simmering just below the surface.
What Happens When the Dam Finally Breaks?
I don’t have a crystal ball, but history isn’t kind to societies where large numbers of capable, educated young people see no path forward. Frustration turns to resentment. Resentment looks for scapegoats. And eventually, things spill into the streets—one way or another.
We’re already seeing commercial real estate teetering, regional banks loaded with shaky loans, and consumer debt at all-time highs. One decent-sized shock—another rate hike cycle, a major default wave, or a sudden AI acceleration—could push the entire system past the tipping point.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong about how bad this can get. But hope isn’t a strategy. The numbers are screaming that something fundamental has broken in the American economic model, and papering over it with more debt or more stimulus feels like kicking the can one final time.
My neighbor’s empty hardware store still sits there, windows papered over. Every time I drive past it I wonder how many more dark windows we’ll see by this time next year. The answer, unfortunately, feels like “a lot.”
Whatever 2026 brings, one thing feels certain: the era of pretending everything is fine is over. The bill for a decade of easy money, unchecked inequality, and technological disruption is coming due—and it’s going to be paid by the people who can least afford it.
Buckle up.
