SmallBusinessNewz

Over the past three months, the Dow made quite a bit of progress, moving from around 10,000 to 10,725.  Of course, in late January, it began to plummet again, and so disappointing numbers from the National Federation of Independent Business about employment sort of make sense.

The NFIB stated, "In January, small business owners reported a seasonally adjusted decline in average employment per firm of .52 workers during the prior three months . . . .  Nine percent of the owners increased employment by an average of 3 workers per firm, but 19 percent reduced employment an average of 3.9 workers per firm (seasonally adjusted)."

Then, looking ahead, the NFIB believes that there are supposed to be "still more firms planning to cut jobs than planning to add."

These statistics more or less match other hiring trends documented by Chris Crum earlier this week, which makes the overall situation look somewhat less than encouraging.

Perhaps one silver lining (and it is admittedly a rather small one) is the fact that some small businesses at least still have excess workers to lay off, and haven't been reduced to single-person companies.