Wiktionary
n. Periods of austerity or economic slowdown.
Usage examples of "straitened times".
The guard on the building was, in these straitened times, necessarily small.
Leaving three acres fallow was a luxury nobody could afford in these straitened times.
Erth, possibly thinking that his principal seat already sprawled over too much ground, more probably prevented from adding a wing in the Palladian style by the straitened times in which he had the ill-fortune to live, contented himself with rebuilding the stables, papering a great many of the rooms, and installing a closed-stove in the enormous kitchen.
In these straitened times the New Adventures constitute one of the few places where new SF writers can work, experiment, show off - and get published.
The former regent had worked his magic once again, gathering together the finest of Morenian and Amanthian nobility, regardless of the short time for planning, regardless of the straitened times.
The communal deferral of illness in straitened times was a phenomenon of which he had heard but never previously witnessed, and every time that he was apprised of an Allied success he had set to worrying about the inevitable flood of maladies that would occur after the liberation.