Category: Small Business Economy

Why Credit Matters to Employment and Sales

Posted by: John Tozzi on February 16

Reuters’ Felix Salmon looks at the relationship between bank credit and small business hiring. Even though big companies are sitting on cash, they won’t drive the jobs recovery anyway, he…

Hints of Improvement for the Small Business Economy

Posted by: Nick Leiber on February 02

Now for some good news. The small business economy is finally showing hints of improvement, according to William Phelan, the co-founder and CEO of commercial lending data provider PayNet, which…

A Lost Generation of Entrepreneurs?

Posted by: Nick Leiber on January 27

This is a post by guest blogger Jeff Bussgang. I’ve been worrying lately that we are suffering from a lost generation of entrepreneurs. That was my first reaction when I…

Home-Based Businesses Increasing

Posted by: John Tozzi on January 25

More people are working from home, and more of them are working for themselves, according to Census data released today. The chart below compares the growth in the number of…

Carl Schramm’s State of Entrepreneurship Address

Posted by: Nick Leiber on January 19

For many entrepreneurs, 2009 was another year of slumping sales and frustratingly tight credit. Their expectations for this year aren’t shaping up to be much better. One big reason for…

Recessions Don’t Spark More Startups

Posted by: Nick Leiber on January 13

Do bad economic times mean a surge of new businesses? Not at all, according to a study by Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky released today by the Kauffman Foundation. Exploring…

We’re All Business Owners Now

Posted by: John Tozzi on January 08

Don’t miss this week’s magazine cover story: The Disposable Worker. It documents companies’ shift from relying on full-time employees to a contingent workforce of temps, freelancers, contractors, and part-timers. Not…

More Older Americans Chose Entrepreneurship

Posted by: Nick Leiber on January 06

The age distribution of American entrepreneurs shifted significantly from 2007 to 2008, according to the latest U.S. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report. From the executive summary: For the total entrepreneurship and…

Temp Workers Driven Into Entrepreneurship

Posted by: John Tozzi on December 21

Companies are replacing full-time jobs with temp positions, and that drives some unemployed and temporary workers to start small businesses to create income. Increases in temp hiring used to signal…

Comparing Expectations: Big Business vs. Small Business

Posted by: John Tozzi on December 10

We’ve been chronicling the disconnect between small businesses still mired in the recession and big public companies beginning to recover. Hoping to explain this a bit more, I took a…

No Rebound Yet For Smallest Businesses

Posted by: John Tozzi on November 30

Confidence among America’s smallest business owners fell to the lowest level since February, according to the latest Discover-Small Business Watch. The survey, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, polls a random sample…

Entrepreneurial Spirit Lives On

Posted by: Amy S. Choi on November 23

Last spring, I wrote about how small business owners in Merced County, Calif., were pushing to jump start the local economy. I recently heard from one of those entrepreneurs, Ken…

Roubini: Two U.S. Economies Diverging

Posted by: John Tozzi on November 18

Nouriel Roubini, the NYU economist who accurately predicted the financial meltdown, writes an important commentary in The Globe and Mail about two disparate American economies: “There is a smaller one…

Goldman Sachs Announces $500M in Aid to Small Business

Posted by: John Tozzi on November 17

Lords of high finance may seem unlikely sources of aid for small businesses. But Goldman Sachs (GS), along with Warren Buffett and several education and nonprofit groups, today announced a…

Bernanke: Credit Still Tight for Small Business

Posted by: John Tozzi on November 17

The credit crunch persists for small firms, and that could drag on job growth, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Economic Club of New York in a speech Monday. Small…

Will the Recovery Leave Small Business Behind?

Posted by: John Tozzi on November 16

Is the small business sector underperforming the broader economy? And if so, does our economic data accurately reflect that? Those are the questions Jan Hatzius, chief US economist at Goldman…

Business Bankruptcies Revisited

Posted by: John Tozzi on October 26

Back in June we published a story about the rising number of commercial bankruptcies. One of the big questions raised was how long the rate of bankruptcies will remain elevated….

Job Losses and Gains Visualized

Posted by: John Tozzi on October 01

Ahead of Friday’s unemployment report, I wanted to take a look at how the job gains and losses of small firms compares to midsize and large firms. Using data from…

254,000 Jobs Lost in September, ADP Says, As Losses Slow

Posted by: John Tozzi on September 30

Will small and midsize service businesses lead the jobs recovery whenever it begins? That’s one indication of the latest jobs report by payroll provider ADP released this morning. Private non-farm…

298,000 Jobs Shed in August, ADP Says

Posted by: John Tozzi on September 02

Private non-farm employers cut 298,000 jobs in August, according to estimates by payroll company ADP, a figure that disappointed analysts’ expectations but still showed a gradual easing of job losses….

Entrepreneurship as a Safety Net

Posted by: John Tozzi on August 27

Is entrepreneurship the new safety net? In a viewpoint column this week, Chris Farrell suggests that corporate careers have become more uncertain than ever, and young people are looking to…

Are Freelancers Workers or Small Business Owners?

Posted by: Nick Leiber on August 20

This is a guest post by Richard Greenwald. America doesn’t know what to make of the rise of the freelancer. Today there are about 25 million freelancers in the U.S.,…

Reporter’s Notebook: How Newspapers in China Portray Entrepreneurs

Posted by: Stacy Perman on August 13

I’m on a two-week fellowship in China and am taking advantage of it to report on entrepreneurship here in a series of blog posts. Check out my previous posts in…

Reporter’s Notebook: How Hospitable Is China to Small Business?

Posted by: Stacy Perman on August 13

I’m on a two-week fellowship in China and am taking advantage of it to report on entrepreneurship here in a series of blog posts. Check out my previous posts in…

Reporter’s Notebook: How Entrepreneurs Innovate in China

Posted by: Stacy Perman on August 13

I’m on a two-week fellowship in China and am taking advantage of it to report on entrepreneurship here in a series of blog posts. Check out my previous posts in…

Reporter’s Notebook: Returnee Entrepreneurs in China, Part I

Posted by: Stacy Perman on August 07

I’m on a two-week fellowship in China and am taking advantage of it to report on entrepreneurship here in a series of blog posts. Check back for more in the…

Will Small Business Lead the Jobs Recovery?

Posted by: John Tozzi on July 07

The recession has claimed more than 6 million private non-farm jobs since it began in December 2007. Brian Headd, an economist with the SBA’s Office of Advocacy, has an essay…

The Independent Coffee Shop vs. Starbucks Debate

Posted by: Nick Leiber on June 25

By educating consumers about decent coffee, Starbucks made it possible for independent coffee shops to gain a foothold in communities across America. That’s one thesis in Bryant Simon’s new…

One Million New Non-Employer Businesses

Posted by: John Tozzi on June 25

Just out from the Census: The U.S. added a million new non-employer businesses in 2007, for a total of 21.7 million. Together these businesses had sales of nearly $1 trillion…

Entrepreneurship: The New Mid-Life Crisis

Posted by: Nick Leiber on June 18

This is a guest blog by Emily Schmitt, who joined BusinessWeek’s Small Business team and Investing team in June. An entrepreneurial boom is on its way, but don’t expect it…

Would Stress Test Assumptions Hold Up For A Startup?

Posted by: John Tozzi on May 08

Entrepreneurs are sometimes accused of seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. They’re too optimistic — naive, even — about how quickly they’ll be profitable and how fast their companies will…

Painting a Downturn

Posted by: Amy S. Choi on April 21

The recession looks different for every community, as we discovered when we went across the country to find out how small businesses were faring in different small towns across America….

The Entrepreneurship Job

Posted by: John Tozzi on April 03

Another 663,000 jobs vanished in March, according to this morning’s Labor Department release, with a staggering 5 million jobs lost in this recession. One consequence that we’ve written about is…

Layoffs Surge Among Small Employers

Posted by: Nick Leiber on March 04

Back in December, we published a special report detailing how employers with limited resources could take advantage of layoffs to find experienced talent. In our overview story, we cited an…

The Mall vs. Downtown

Posted by: John Tozzi on February 27

In the early ’90s, the Macy’s in the mall in the city where I grew up closed. The mall wasn’t anchored by another big retailer, and it wasn’t long before…

10 percent: The Local Stimulus

Posted by: John Tozzi on February 19

Yesterday we asked whether promoting shopping at local businesses would be enough to revive the economy in Wilmington, Ohio, from the 8,000 jobs being lost as DHL shuts down its…

How to build a local economy

Posted by: John Tozzi on February 18

On the other side of the state from Youngstown, where a business incubator is helping to stave off the worst effects of the declining industrial economy, Wilmington, Ohio, is trying…