For the legislative and political week January 3-7
Happy New Year. Welcome to the January 3-7 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your NFIB small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.
Minimum Wage
- As we reported in previous Main Street Minutes, there are new minimum-wage rates in effect. Here, courtesy of The Sacramento Bee, are the 29 cities that will have even higher minimum-wage rates than the state’s. Wow! Little Emeryville (next to Oakland), $17.13 an hour.
Chart courtesy of the California Department of Industrial Relations
New Employment Laws Effective 2022
- The National Law Review has published two stories on new laws for 2022 that employers should be especially aware of, one from contributing law firm Vedder Price and another from contributing law firm Epstein Becker & Green. Click on the firm names to go right to the stories. NFIB was involved in helping stop or pass many of the bills involved. All are of interest to small business, and NFIB recommends members give them a quick glance.
- NFIB California also produced this podcast with employment law expert Ben Ebbink on what small-business owners should know going into 2022.
- “A slate of new California laws set to go into effect Jan. 1 touches on everything from police accountability to housing reform, ketchup packets, and how veterinarians gather blood donations for sick pets,” reports The Sacramento Bee in its new laws story.
Speaking of Podcasts
- Finishing out the year, NFIB California produced two podcasts:
- One is an interview with Darrell Feil, Bakersfield businessman and former NFIB leadership council chairman, about how his firm is surviving the pandemic.
- The other podcast features a talk with Elizabeth Milito of the NFIB Legal Center and Holly Wade of the NFIB Research Center on the historically challenging time small business is living in.
- You can find all the year’s podcasts at www.nfib.com/ca/podcasts. Check them out and feel free to send them to your network of customers, friends, and followers.
Four Hiring Mistakes to Avoid in 2022
- The network of Business Journals across the nation all ran this story in their publications, Four common hiring mistakes small businesses should avoid in this unprecedented labor market, which included some NFIB data.
- The story, behind a paywall, fleshes out its four mistakes with some possibly useful information. The mistakes:
- Tapping the same old pool
- Moving too slowly (by dragging out the hiring process)
- Foundering on flexibility (which shifted from perk to expectation)
- Failing to sell yourself (tables have turned in the employer-candidate dynamic).
The Year in Media
- Spreading the small-business message via the media is an essential part of NFIB California’s lobbying strategy. Some media, the Northern (and Southern) California Record, the Citizens Journal (Ventura County), and The Epoch Times solicit NFIB’s input frequently. And, the three big dogs made some room for the small-business message as well. NFIB California was prominently mentioned nine times in 2021 by The Sacramento Bee, six by the Los Angeles Times, and six by The Associated Press. For a representative sample of the hits NFIB California was able to garner for the small-business agenda, click here for a scroll down media lane.
Nationally
- The new year will open with an NFIB Jobs Report on Thursday, January 6. As a reminder, Jobs Reports are issued the first Thursday of every month, and the Small Business Economic Trends report (aka the Optimism Index) comes out the second Tuesday of every month. One of the Optimism Index’s 10 components is the Jobs Report.
Next Main Street Minute January 10.
