On Monday the monthly Discover Small Business Watch index was released, and small business owners reported they were more pessimistic about the economic conditions, with over 66 percent saying for them the recession is far from over.

In this months Discover index, a random telephone survey of 750 U.S. small business owners with under five employees and 3,000 consumers doing business with them was conducted. The overall index fell from from 89.8 in August to 87.7 in September, a 2.1 point drop.

In August, 48 percent of small business owners felt the economy was doing poorly, while in September that number rose to over 50 percent of small business owners believing the economy was still in poor condition.

Other major concerns according to the Discover Small Business Watch index survey was operational costs for the small business owners. This was a major change, as in August 43 percent said they were going to cut back on areas of business development like capital expenditures, inventory and marketing, in September that increased significantly with over 50 percent saying they were going to cut back in those operational areas.

Looking forward, small business owners aren’t optimistic concerning the rest of the year either, as almost 50 percent believe it’ll be worse in the fourth quarter of 2009 than it was in the fourth quarter of 2008, with 30 percent expecting it to be about the same, and 21 percent thinking it’ll improve some from last year.

This discrepancy is to be expected because of the variety of sectors small business operates within. Consequently, a small percentage of small businesses will grow, while the majority will either fall in sales or remain stagnant.

A number of people were hoping to hear that small business owners were more optimistic, as they had been over the past three months so that a trend could be accurately identified, but obviously that’s not the case, and it’ll be a long time before things really turn around, no matter what spin the government attempts to put on it.