of its spring decline and remains well below pre - covid - 19 levels. at the aggregate level, indicators of business investment, including shipments of capital goods, have been stronger than anticipated and point to a solid increase in equipment and investment spending in the third quarter. in contrast, investment on nonresidential structures remains depressed. activity in some sectors remains substantially below pre - covid - 19 levels. for instance, airline passenger traffic is still 60 percent below its pre - pandemic level, contributing to the decline in aircraft orders this year, and hotel revenue per available room is only half the level of a year earlier. our actions have helped promote the flow of credit to households and businesses. borrowing costs are low along the yield curve, and liquidity is abundant. amid historically low corporate bond yields, gross issuance of both investment - and speculative - grade corporate bonds was strong in the third quarter. in contrast to the favorable financing conditions for large businesses with access to capital markets, financing conditions for small businesses remain tight, with lower lending activity and signs of deteriorating loan performance. small businesses tend to be concentrated in sectors that entail high direct contact, operate with relatively tight cash - 3buffers, and rely on bank credit rather market - based finance. in the most recent census bureau small business pulse survey from early october, more than 30 percent of small businesses report having one month or less of cash on hand. the most recent federal reserve small business lending survey indicates that the paycheck protection program ( ppp ) provided a critical lifeline for small and mediumsized businesses, but also that credit availability has otherwise tightened. driven primarily by ppp - related loans, originations of new small business commercial and industrial loans in the second quarter of 2020 were more than nine times the size of originations in either the first quarter of 2020 or the second quarter of 2019. 2 however, 44 percent of respondents, on net, indicate loan standards tightened over the second quarter. about 43 percent of respondents, on net, reported a deterioration in the credit quality of small business applicants — the largest decline since the inception of the survey and only the second time in which respondents of all bank sizes, on net, reported a decline. minority small businesses have been particularly hard hit. according to recent research, between february and april, the economy saw a 41 percent decline in black business owners and a 32 percent decline in latinx business owners, compared with a 22 percent overall decline. 3 the labor

from a fear of job skill obsolescence, and one very tangible measure of it is the pressure on our education and training systems to prepare and adapt workers to effectively run the new technologies. these pressures are likely to remain intense, even though they may wax and wane, because i see nothing to suggest that the trends toward a greater conceptual content of our nation ’ s output and, thus, toward increased demand for conceptual skills in our workforce, will end. the rapidity of innovation and the unpredictability of the directions it may take imply a need for considerable investment in human capital. even the most significant advances in information and computer technology will produce little additional economic value without human creativity and intellect. the heyday when a high school or college education would serve a graduate for a lifetime is gone ; basic credentials, by themselves, are not enough to ensure success in the workplace. today ’ s recipients of diplomas expect to have many jobs and to use a wide range of skills over their working lives. their parents and grandparents looked to a more stable future - even if in reality it often turned out otherwise. workers must be equipped not simply with technical know - how but also with the ability to create, analyze and transform information and to interact effectively with others. moreover, learning will increasingly be a lifelong activity. certainly, the notion that human and physical capital are complements is not new. technological advance has inevitably brought with it improvements not only in the capital inputs used in production but also new demands on workers who must interact with that increasingly more complex stock of capital. early in this century, these advances required workers with a higher level of cognitive skills, for instance the ability to read manuals, to interpret blueprints or to understand formulae. our educational system responded : in the 1920s and 1930s, high school enrollment in this country expanded rapidly, pulling youth from rural areas, where opportunities were limited, into more productive occupations in business and broadening the skills of students to meet the needs of an advancing manufacturing sector. it became the job of these institutions to prepare students for work life, not just for a transition to college. in the context of the demands of the economy at that time, a high school diploma represented the training needed to be successful in most aspects of american enterprise. the economic returns for having a high school diploma rose and, as a result, high school enrollment rates climbed. at the same time, our system of higher education was also responding to the advances in economic processes.