Holly Wade joined Yahoo! Finance to discuss the small business economy and increasing levels of uncertainty
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Oct. 9, 2024) – NFIB Research Center Executive Director Holly Wade joined Brad Smith of Yahoo! Finance to discuss the state of the small business economy and increasing levels of uncertainty on Main Street.
Wade examines data from NFIB’s September SBET survey to show how inflation, financing costs, and tax pressures are increasing small business owners’ uncertainty for future business conditions.
Watch Wade’s interview here: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/inflation-election-compounding-small-business-170112841.html
“[Uncertainty] hit an all-time high for our 50-year survey, and a lot of that has to do with the uncertainty around the election [and] what that means for small business[es] moving forward, what type of environment they’ll be operating in. And they’re facing a big tax hike, possibly at the end of 2025. So, all of that is weighing on small businesses.”
“In addition to that, is what the [Federal Reserve] is doing. Looking ahead and seeing how that might impact their decisions on financing capital expenditures [and] expanding their business. Financing, not surprisingly, has been very expensive for many small business owners.”
“We’ve seen a decline in those saying that they have a job opening that they currently aren’t able to fill, but we’re still in very high levels back to where we were in 2019. [It’s] similar with hiring plans. So, we’ve fallen off from kind of the stratosphere levels that we’ve seen over the last number of years. But the labor market, as far as what small business owners are reporting in our survey, still looks fairly strong. But again, those uncertainties are going to impact how they move forward.”
“Right now, there’s a lot of concern about what their tax rates will be. That 20% Small Business Deduction on qualifying income was a huge benefit for them in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and that is set to expire at the end of next year. And so that’s one of the main concerns that they have moving into 2025 is that Congress passes legislation to make that permanent, that the administration follows through and signs, and they’re looking for a lot of uncertainty on that front…. We’re still seeing almost a quarter of our members saying inflation is their single biggest problem in operating their business.”
