Spare A Thought For The Small Businesses
"Overall, small business owners are not optimistic about 2023," Bill Dunkelberg sighed on Tuesday morning in the US.
Dunkelberg is, of course, chief economist at the NFIB. The group's closely-watched small business optimism index deteriorated in December. In fact, at 89.8, the gauge came in below every estimate from 20 certified clairvoyants.
December's print was the lowest since June, and marked the 12th straight month below the half-century average for the index.
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Anecdotally, my two nephews are electrical engineers in Silicon Valley. They have told me the large SV employers of engineers are cutting en masse – above the levels being reported in the news. This should result in a pool of engineers available for jobs at smaller companies.
If the USA would provide free English language classes to incoming immigrants, that would help.
Leading up to this economic downcycle, Microsoft cut a lot of consultants from the payroll, including me. I was peeved, but found another consulting role in Texas. I’m in the process of hiring in a permanent role with an international. Silicon Valley companies don’t deserve any sympathy. They’re doing just fine.
I believe the US government does support English language classes at some level. They do just about everything. I agree classes should be provided. Only Silicon Valley should also provide English language classes as a way of integrating immigrant staff. Why the hell not? It would help them disavow their image as self-centered, money-hungry geeks.
I spent nearly 35 years in the metro area that served as the home of a large engineering center for Deere & Co. During those years many hundreds of those engineers were laid off. They didn’t go away, however. Many were absorbed by three large local temp agencies that specialized in providing engineers, when needed, to Deere and others. Tech(nical) firms are laying off these folks but my suspicion is that behavior is simply a process of converting these costly workers into less expensive and more flexible independent contractors.
Would love and appreciate seeing further geographical breakdown of the data …
Thanks for enlightening me. I didn’t know that small businesses provide 47% of private sector jobs. I thought it was more like 25%. If large corporations are laying people off and the smaller corporations are picking them up this could help with the inflation problem. I was consulting during the pandemic with bigger companies and was making 35% more than before the pandemic. I took a full time position with a medium sized company with an expected 25% cut in pay. But I was getting calls from recruiters offering positions at small companies for a 50% cut in pay.
Thank you for speaking my language! (I’m one of your resident small-business-owner readers) For the past year, I’ve only raised prices as the wholesale moved up. But having expanded to a second (wine & spirits) store, during a time that construction costs were about 75% above expectations, and now payroll is expanding yet again, not to mention plenty of other costs rising…….. I’m about to embark on nearly across the board price increases. I’ve been squeezed long enough this year.
I’ll be interested to see if some of the wholesale price increases of the past year come back down. There have been literally 2 or 3 items that were a little less in the past week, and I was surprised to see it. I expect most of it to stick, though.