Small businesses still not hiring. Tax credits won’t help.
In almost every previous recession it has been small businesses that created the job growth that pulled us out of high unemployment.
According to the latest poll of small business owners taken by the NFIB, small businesses are not yet moving into job creation mode.
Over the next three months, 8 percent of small business owners surveyed plan to reduce employment (down 2 points), and 13 percent plan to create new jobs (up 3 points), yielding a seasonally adjusted net negative 1 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, unchanged and still more firms planning to cut jobs than planning to add.
"Net job creation will appear in the coming months, but the gains will be painfully slow with timid consumer spending, especially in the service sector," said William Dunkelberg, NFIB's chief economist.
Owners complained that poor sales are their top problem, and there is no need to hire with no new customers. In this sales environment, it is hard for workers to earn their pay. Owners cannot pay workers more than the value they add to the firm. This is why a jobs tax credit will do little to increase employment. No one can pay $40,000 for a worker to get a $5,000 tax credit unless that worker can add at least $35,000 in revenue to cover the cost of hiring. And as long as the tax credit issue is alive in Congress and not passed, employers that were ready to hire (13 percent plan to hire) will wait until they can qualify for the credit, delaying much needed gains in employment.
More evidence that those shaping our current economic policy are completely out of touch with the realities of owning a growing a small business.
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