PRESS RELEASE
Date: August 5, 2019
From: South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce
Subject: Small businesses nationally shed 105,000 jobs in past 3 months
Contact: Frank Knapp, President/CEO, 803-252-5733, 803-600-6874 (c),
fknapp@scsbc.org
Small businesses nationally shed 105,000 jobs in past 3 months
(Columbia, SC) The Department of Labor released its national jobs report last week indicating that the country added 164,000 jobs in July. The ADP National Employment Report also released a report saying that 156,000 new jobs were added last month.
However, small businesses with fewer than 20 employees shed 18,000 jobs in July according to the ADP National Employment Report. This was the third month in a row of jobs lost from these small businesses (down 50,000 in May and 37,000 in June).
“Businesses with fewer than 20 workers are vital to our economy and represent 67% of all small businesses,” said Frank Knapp Jr., President and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. “Small businesses are the first to feel a faltering economy and the last to fully recover from a recession.”
“Small businesses are suffering the brunt of the slowdown,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Hampering job growth are labor shortages, layoffs at bricks-and-mortar retailers, and fallout from weaker global trade.”
“Most net new jobs come from businesses with four or fewer employees and that are less than 5 years old,” said Knapp. “Start-ups are crucial to a sustainable, growing economy. Unless something happens to turn these small business jobs numbers around, we are on the verge of serious economic downturn.”
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The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce is a statewide advocacy organization founded in 2000. With over 10,000 small business and entrepreneur supporters, it has successfully worked to make South Carolina more small business friendly in areas such as healthcare, taxation, regulation, worker training, energy/conservation, workers’ compensation and economic development.