Over the past year, economic coverage has been defined by contradiction. Growth appears steady one month and softer the next. Inflation has eased, yet input costs remain stubborn. Now, with U.S. unemployment reaching a four-year high, even the labor market is showing signs of strain. While many forecasts still point to moderate growth and an economy that has absorbed higher rates without breaking, policymakers and analysts increasingly warn that trade policy, labor shortages, and geopolitical tensions could turn isolated pressure points into broader risk.
Yet these high-level narratives miss an important truth beneath the surface. When we look at the data on how capital is actually deployed, specifically where secured credit is flowing, a pattern emerges that helps reconcile these ostensibly conflicting headlines: the economy is bifurcating. Some sectors continue to attract capital and investment, while others are much more tentative, choosing liquidity over leverage.
Our proprietary data, distilled in the Q3 2025 Middesk Index and our 15-month UCC lien analysis, offers a clearer lens on that divergence. Business formation remains elevated, but the path from new entity creation to meaningful investment and credit access is highly uneven. Across millions of newly formed entities, only a narrow slice appears in secured credit filings — and those filings concentrate in a limited set of asset-heavy industries where liens are structurally required to access capital.
Formation remains strong, but credit is selective
The continuing volume of new business formations echoed in economic reporting reflects an entrepreneurial economy that has not vanished in the post-pandemic era. Yet while headlines describe steady formation and resilient small business activity, they seldom highlight that access to substantive financing is not evenly distributed.
According to Middesk’s lien dataset, roughly 879,000 UCC liens were recorded against about 596,000 businesses over the past 15 months, an average of 1.48 liens per business that had a lien. In a country with more than 30 million active businesses, that is a small subset, but it is precisely where credit is moving.
What matters for growth and expansion is not formation alone, but who can secure capital. In that respect, the patterns we see are unmistakable: credit continues to concentrate in capital-intensive sectors.
Construction: Mixed headlines, persistent investment
Construction has been a frequent subject of inconsistent coverage in 2025. Some industry forecasts suggest a modest rise in total U.S. construction starts, driven by nonresidential and infrastructure projects even as residential segments soften. Other reporting underscores weakening conditions in segments of the construction market, including softer employment and labor challenges amid inflationary pressures.
Those two narratives are not contradictory, but they miss the broader picture: even when headline sentiment is mixed, construction continues to attract secured borrowing. This implies that lenders are still willing to finance equipment, megaprojects, and long-term contracts that underpin the industry’s capital needs — a sign of continuity in credit demand that isn’t always visible in quarterly activity reports or sentiment indices.
Transportation: Stocks rise, growth remains uncertain
Transportation has been prominent in both financial and sector press in recent months. For example, major transportation stocks have rallied, with the Dow Jones Transportation Average climbing more than 10 percent in 2025 on signals of broader economic stability and investor confidence in freight movement. At the same time, independent coverage highlights structural challenges: aging freight rail fleets and rising emissions illustrate logistical bottlenecks and investment needs that are not always reflected in headline optimism.
Despite these mixed headlines, transportation and warehousing account for a significant share of secured credit activity in our data. That suggests that even amid uncertainty about demand growth or regulatory pressures, firms in the sector continue to seek financing for vehicles, terminals, and infrastructure — commitments that often precede or transcend quarterly freight tonnage reports.
Manufacturing: Policy optimism and uneven reality
Meanwhile, investment trends in manufacturing technology, including machinery orders and robot deployments, show renewed activity in certain subsegments of the sector, signaling real capital commitments rather than just sentiment.
Middesk’s secured credit data aligns with this complexity: manufacturing shows a consistent presence in lien filings, indicating that lenders are still attaching collateral to credit extended for equipment, expansion, and modernization. That pattern contrasts with narrative cycles that emphasize either recessionary risk or abstract policy outcomes without tracing the flow of capital.
A deeper pattern emerges
Taken together, these facts help explain why broad economic coverage can feel both optimistic and pessimistic at once. Financial news talks about resilience and risk. Sectoral reporting swings between stress and opportunity. But those narratives tend to treat sectors in isolation or focus on short-term indicators.
The Middesk Index shows something more structural: capital-intensive industries with tangible collateral continue to secure financing and move forward, while asset-light sectors remain cautious and credit-averse. That bifurcation is not immediately visible in GDP growth rates or formation counts, but it shows up clearly in where secured credit is flowing.
Why this matters
For lenders and financial institutions, this means risk exposure is concentrated not just by industry but by the nature of capital deployment. Construction and transportation may look mixed in headlines, but the underlying credit activity suggests continued investment in their fundamental assets. Manufacturing’s trajectory is equally nuanced, with both political narratives and real capital orders shaping its credit profile.
For fintechs and underwriting platforms, the lesson is that raw formation and sentiment measures are insufficient. Integrating secured credit signals reveals where lenders are actually placing bets, not just where economic stories circulate.
For business operators, the split underscores a simple reality: access to financing — especially secured financing — continues to depend on assets, history, and collateral. New entities may form in large numbers, but only a subset is converting that formation into capital access that supports growth.
And for anyone trying to make sense of economic headlines, the divergence we see in the Middesk data offers a grounded explanation for the mixed signals: the economy isn’t just slowing or speeding up. It is splitting into parts that can still borrow and parts that are choosing not to.
Follow the flow of capital
The Q3 2025 Middesk Index analyzes 15 months of UCC lien data to show which industries continue to secure credit and which are pulling back. Go beyond formation counts and sentiment to understand how lenders are really placing bets. Access the Q3 data.
