Arizona Comment on Latest Small Business Economic Report

Date: September 14, 2021

State’s leaders credited with helping deflect some of the buffeting uncertainty

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Chad Heinrich, Arizona State Director, [email protected]
or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, [email protected]

PHOENIX, Sept. 14, 2021—NFIB, the nation’s leading small-business association today released its latest monthly Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) report, the bellwether measurement of America’s Main Street economy, and it showed only a very slight improvement in optimism.

“Thankfully, in Arizona, our state government leaders have not layered on near the uncertainty that businesses in other states are experiencing,” said Chad Heinrich, Arizona state director for NFIB, which publishes the monthly SBET report. “Finding qualified workers remains a make-or-break issue for most mom-and-pop businesses. Our lawmakers at the State Capitol protected Arizona’s small-business owners from a spiteful tax increase seemingly meant to punish sole proprietors and other small businesses in Arizona. These small employers are now hoping that the gratuitous attempt to reverse this small business tax relief falls flat before the referendum petitions are due on September 28.”

SBET Takeaways

For Heinrich, the things that stood out in today’s SBET, a national poll not broken down by state, were 48-year highs in both unfilled job openings and increased compensation, countered by drops in the percentage of small-business owners expecting the economy to improve and ‘now a good time to expand’ categories.

“If only Congress could emulate the pro-small-business spirit of our Arizona Legislature, a lot of uncertainty and malaise would start to evaporate from our SBET reports. Not only is Congress not doing so, it seems to go out of its way to perpetuate problems with such proposals as scaling back the Small Business Deduction on federal taxes, repealing the stepped-up-basis on estate taxes, and attempting to pass the Pro Act which would severely cripple independent contracting.”

More about NFIB’s Small Business Survival campaign here.

From NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg

“As the economy moves into the fourth quarter, small business owners are losing confidence in the strength of future business conditions. The biggest problems facing small employers right now is finding enough labor to meet their demand and for many, managing supply chain disruptions.”

More comment is available on Page 3 of the NFIB Small Business Economic Trends report.

About the Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) report

The NFIB Research Center has collected Small Business Economic Trends data with quarterly surveys since the 4th quarter of 1973 and monthly surveys since 1986. Survey respondents are drawn from a random sample of NFIB’s membership. The report is released on the second Tuesday of each month. Today’s survey was conducted in August 2021.

The SBET’s primary value is anticipating short-run fluctuations in economic activity. An additional value of the SBET is its measurement of small business activities and concerns over time. The benefit of a longitudinal data set offers an invaluable perspective on how policies and business cycles impact small businesses over time. The SBET is one of the few archival data sets on small business, particularly when research questions address business operations rather than opinions. Today, it’s the largest, longest-running data set on small business economic conditions available.

Keep up with the latest on Arizona small business news at www.nfib.com/arizona or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_AZ

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For 78 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since its founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.

NFIB Arizona
602-263-7690
NFIB.com/AZ
Twitter: @NFIB_AZ

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