Thanks to our friends at Chamberpost.com for catching this fantastic article, which should be self-evident but mysteriously escapes those in the hallways of power:
So why aren’t we hiring?
It’s simple: uncertainty. I wrote about this concern earlier in the year, and not much has changed. We’re still waiting to learn what recent legislation will mean for us. And I’m not just talking about the Financial Regulation passed in July. When politicians told us we had to pass the Health Care bill to find out what was in it, business owners suspended their plans to hire. The risks are too great.
To be clear, business owners can handle risk — it’s a very big part of what we do. But we’re not idiots. The myth propagated outside of business is that we’re all cowboys and will risk it all regularly. (These are the same folks who push and beg us to hire.) Here’s the thing — entrepreneurs like calculated risks, risks that we think are likely to yield profits for us. Very few successful entrepreneurs will gamble with their companies, betting the whole enterprise on a lark. We want to be comfortable with most of the variables before we take a leap. That’s how we built our companies, and that’s what we need in order to continue to grow them.
This simple message isn’t getting through to elected officials. Maybe it will be translated properly in November.
2 Comments
It seems when people want to make decisions to do something they can blame someone else for it. Many of these employers were not hiring anyone in the first place they just wanted to blame Obama. Bush pushed gas prices off the roof, people lost their homes, cars, and jobs. But no one is blaming him for anything. Why is that? Most countries in Europe have health care for everyone. We need heallth care for everyone. Why should people die from diabetes when the goverment can afford to pay for meds. American should be ashamed of how greedy they are.
I too am a small business owner. It’s not “uncertainty” about regulation or legislation that prevents me from hiring, it’s lack of demand. If our forecast shows an increase in active prospects and I want the business, then we figure out a way to justify more employee hours. My other choice, if I don’t have enough manpower, is to watch that activity go to my competitor.
I’ve reviewed a summary of the new health reform law – small businesses like ours with fewer than 50 employees are not required to offer insurance coverage through their business and are exempt from penalties. But even without this worry of providing health care insurance for all our employees, if I don’t see potential buyers, there still won’t be any reason for my business to re-hire positions trimmed back in 2007 when this Recession hit home.
I was stunned to discover that roughly 80% of those jobs shed since the Recession began were from small businesses. In spite of improved profits, large corporations are not picking up that slack. Estimates suggest our country needs to add about 1.5 Million jobs EACH YEAR just to keep pace with new workers entering the market. And during the Bush era, with tax cuts across the board, the economy created only 3 Million new jobs over 8 years.
Today almost 20% of US workers are still unemployed, under-employed, or they have simply stopped looking. Without boosting jobs, I don’t foresee consumer demand picking up for our products. And tax cuts alone have not proven to be enough.