Small businesses created 30,000 jobs in August, according to Intuit’s report released recently. This made the growth rate drop 0.2 percent since July, which produced 15,000 more jobs than August.
Still, employment increased in most states where there are more than 1,000 small businesses, including Texas, which tied for the fourth largest employment gain in August.
“This month’s indexes indicate that small businesses are hurting,” Susan Woodward, the economist who created the indexes for Intuit, said in a statement. “The employment rate has been slowing since April, and revenues have been falling since March, declining 2.7 percent from its most recent peak. At an annual rate, this is a decline of just over 6 percent, which is substantial.”
The retail and hotel and food services industries saw the biggest declines, with health care having the smallest declines.
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, small businesses created ‘essentially zero’ jobs in August, which continues the sluggish year on the hiring front for smaller businesses across the country. Some suggest that employers are hesitant to add more people to their payrolls during such a close election for president.
“Any serious job creation this year will have to come from large firms or new small firms created to meet the needs of millions of new consumers due to population growth,” NFIB Chief Economist William Dunkelberg said in a statement. “But existing small businesses are unlikely to expand before the election.”
Although more than half of small businesses hired or tried to hire new employees over the last three months, they said finding qualified applicants for open positions was difficult.
Read more at DallasNews.com and WashingtonPost.com
