Mom-and-pop enterprises not optimistic about the immediate future
DENVER, Nov. 9, 2021—From Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business on today’s release of NFIB’s monthly Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) report, America’s bellwether measurement of the Main Street economy.
“The most salient finding in today’s SBET report, to me, is that small-business owners are not optimistic about the immediate future, which will have to change if we’re ever to have a full national economic recovery. Small-business owners expecting better business conditions over the next six months fell four points to a net negative 37%—a decline of 17 points over the past three months to its lowest level since November 2012.
“The biggest factors contributing to the glumness are the continuing inability to find employees, which our latest Jobs Report quantified, supply chain disruptions, which our last COVID-19 poll of our membership measured the severity of, inflation, and a Congress still threatening mom-and-pop enterprises with more regulations and higher taxes.
“Colorado’s small-business owners did get a bit of good news last week when Governor Polis announced he would pay off a substantial chunk of the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund debt to the federal government, which will help alleviate a big worry small-business owners had over even higher increases in their UI taxes. In this era of great uncertainty, any positive news helps.”
Sixty-four percent of NFIB members have between zero and nine employees.
From NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg
“Small business owners are attempting to take advantage of current economic growth but remain pessimistic about business conditions in the near future. One of the biggest problems for small businesses is the lack of workers for unfilled positions and inventory shortages, which will continue to be a problem during the holiday season.
“Adding to the muddle, Washington is having trouble putting its economic policies into place. Spending and tax policies are still up in the air, while debt ceiling problems loom larger each day. The Federal Reserve is also scrambling to reset policies to deal with growth and inflation numbers it had not expected.”
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 October 2021. NFIB’s SBET and Jobs Report are national snapshots not broken down by state.
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.
Contact: Tony Gagliardi, Colorado State Director, 303-325-6243, [email protected],
or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, 415-640-5156, [email protected]
Keep up with the latest Colorado small-business news at www.nfib.com/colorado or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_CO or on Facebook @NFIB.CO
###
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 Colorado
1700 Lincoln Street, 17th Floor
Denver, CO 80203
303-860-1778
www.nfib.com/colorado
Twitter: @NFIB_CO
Facebook: NFIB.CO
