By Brittany Hutson
Small business owners are still suffering from the brutal attack of the Great Recession as evinced by a recent Gallup survey poll that asked Americans whether their companies were hiring, reducing their work forces or staying the same size.
While large companies, including federal governments, are hiring more workers, smaller businesses, including state and local governments, are shedding jobs. In businesses with fewer than 10 employees, nine percent of workers said their employer was hiring. In contrast, at companies with at least 1,000 employees, more than four in 10 employees, or 42 percent, reported that their workplaces were hiring in the week ending Nov. 14th. These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews with 3,991 employees between Nov. 8th-14th.
Commentary from the Gallup poll stresses that entrepreneurship should be a top priority for the U.S. since increasing the number of jobs in small businesses is essential for a successful jobs recovery. There are a variety of factors that are hindering small businesses from being the “engines of job growth”—they are adjusting to working with less man power and are utilizing contract workers or part-time people to avoid paying costs such as benefits and overtime. Also, owners are depending on their current staff to work additional hours instead of hiring more people.
Essentially, many are not hiring due to stressed working capital and apprehension about additional costs. Who can blame them since banks are still not lending?
What will ultimately drive small businesses forward are customers who are demanding goods and services from them, which in turn will cause businesses to hire to meet that demand. It is up to the government to create that demand, some owners say.
