According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the number of jobs created by small business was on the rise in the month of February 2011. The NFIB, itself, is a Washington DC-based small business association, with offices in all state capitals. To determine these figures, over 740 small business owners in the United States were randomly surveyed.
The findings from this NFIB study determined that there in fact is good news on the small business job front. More specifically, William C. Dunkelberg, the chief economist with the NFIB had the following to say about the study:
“While job creation reports have been improving for almost two years, they have consistently been negative or near zero, indicating that employment at the nation’s small firms was still contracting, albeit at slower and slower rates.”
He continued: “.... this month’s reading confirms that we are moving in the right direction. Equally important, small firms’ plans to hire have been consistently positive for the past five consecutive months. “
In fact, the NFIB also determined that the percent of small business owners that have hard-to-fill job openings rose two points to 15 percent. According to Dunkelberg, these figures indicate that an unemployment rate reduction is likely to occur within the coming few months.
Additionally, the number of small businesses that plan to create jobs gained modest – yet important gains – by growing by two points to increase to five percent of all US small business firms. While again modest, this figure is far better than the negative ten percent number from March of 2009.
That said, while there is slow growth, there of course are still some challenges to overcome. For instance, the US economy produces more than the economy did in 2007, but the US economy produces this output with 7.2 million less employees than it did in that year.
“A consequence of this is increased employee productivity. However, it also has led to stubbornly high levels of unemployment, said Dunkelberg. “Additional contributing factors include the strong growth in manufacturing (which uses relatively few employees to produce output), the absence of one million new housing starts that would normally be started this year, and the apparent ‘over-hiring’ that occurred late in the expansion, before the handwriting on the wall became clear to owners”.
Thus, while the US economy still has some gains to make, the future is looking better for job seekers.
By: Larisa Redins
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