WASHINGTON, D.C. (Dec. 10, 2025) – NFIB Research Center Executive Director Holly Wade joined Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld on Bloomberg: The Close to discuss the most recent Small Business Optimism Index. 

Wade analyzes NFIB’s November SBET survey, explaining why small business owners are feeling more optimistic despite facing challenges with labor quality. 

Watch Wade’s full interview here and below.

“So, small business owners, you know, they’ve been met with a number of challenges over the last number of years, and the last Small Business Optimism Index did improve in November, and so as you mentioned, that was buoyed by a stronger share of small business owners saying they expect sales to improve over the next quarter. That’s a really good sign as small business owners when the survey was taken going into the holiday season, whether it’s Small Business Saturday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And so you know, moving into the holiday season, they seem fairly optimistic, more optimistic about sales moving forward and so economic conditions seem to be fairly supportive for small business owners and they are telling us that so far going into the last part of 2025, that they’re doing pretty well.” 

[…] 

“Labor market constraints are a huge issue for a lot of small business owners. Right now, if you look at labor quality and labor cost as the biggest problem facing small business owners, about just under a third, about 30% are saying that one of the two are their single biggest issue in operating their business, which is constraining their ability to take advantage of sales opportunities, if they’re not able to fill those open positions, fulfill those hiring plans that they may have for the next quarter. And, so, that’s putting a lot of strain on businesses certainly and specific industry sectors, namely construction. So, that’s limiting their capacity to grow their business but they’re still expecting strong sales in the next quarter and that was a good sign. So, the labor market is still being very supported by the small business sector.”