Small Business Employment Trends Improve

Small business employment stats took a turn for the better in March, according to new data from Intuit.  Small businesses were apparently able to create quite a few jobs and offer their workers more hours on the clock, to boot.

Let’s start by talking about job creation.  Intuit said in an official statement, "The monthly report found that small business employment grew by 0.2 percent in March, equating to an annual growth rate of nearly 3 percent.  This translates to approximately 50,000 new jobs created nationwide this month."

That’s pretty respectable.  Indeed, toss in the figure about hours worked (there was a 0.12 percent rise compared to February), and things seem rather positive.  It’s not like small business owners were hiring lots of folks then sending everyone home, or even splitting up the same amount of work.

There was one unfortunate detail: Intuit believes wages slipped a little.  Still, the decline was a barely measurable 0.03 percent, which shouldn’t count for much.

Indeed, all of this led economist Susan Woodward to state, "Employment is up again for small business this month.  The gain, at an annual rate, is not quite as large as last month but it’s still encouraging.  Plus there is one more sign of strength – employment was up for the first time in many months in all nine U.S. divisions.  On the state level, employment was up for many of the ‘sand states’ – Oregon, California, Arizona, and Florida – or those states hit hardest by falling real estate prices."

One other piece of positive news: the Dow and Nasdaq climbed today by 0.58 percent and 0.72 percent, respectively.