Small business owners are still whittling away at their payroll, but the deluge of pink slips on Main Street is slowing down.
Want a loan for your business? Hit the plastic. That's about all banks are going to offer -- and the terms are much less favorable than traditional lines of credit.
As small business lending continues to dry up, the federal government is readying two new initiatives aimed at reversing the trend. To unveil them, President Obama traveled Wednesday to Maryland, where he visited a family-owned company that used a government-backed loan to fund a recent expansion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Congress is set to consider a measure increasing the amount of money the federal government can lend to small businesses.
President Obama is trying -- again -- to help small business get the cash they desperately need.
Back in August, Federal Reserve officials suggested that the Great Recession was ending and the U.S. could expect "a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth." But even with stock market indexes and the bottom lines of large financial firms bouncing back, small businesses can expect a longer slog to economic health.
In August the Small Business Administration released its annual scorecard tallying federal dollars awarded to small business contractors last year.
As the H1N1 swine flu virus starts its second major sweep through the U.S., business owners are bracing for the impact of a worse-than-usual flu season on their workforces. That's reviving debate on a contentious issue: What kind of sick leave should companies offer employees -- and should it be mandated by law?
Here's a telling statistic about the toll the recession is taking on Main Street: This year, the government's top small business lending program got loans to 25,000 fewer entrepreneurs than it did last year.
A government effort to get badly needed cash into the hands of struggling small business owners is slowly gaining momentum, but entrepreneurs seeking the scarce loans are still in for a frustrating ride.
Small business owners are still whittling away at their payroll, but the deluge of pink slips on Main Street is slowing down.
Want a loan for your business? Hit the plastic. That's about all banks are going to offer -- and the terms are much less favorable than traditional lines of credit.
As small business lending continues to dry up, the federal government is readying two new initiatives aimed at reversing the trend. To unveil them, President Obama traveled Wednesday to Maryland, where he visited a family-owned company that used a government-backed loan to fund a recent expansion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Congress is set to consider a measure increasing the amount of money the federal government can lend to small businesses.
President Obama is trying -- again -- to help small business get the cash they desperately need.
Back in August, Federal Reserve officials suggested that the Great Recession was ending and the U.S. could expect "a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth." But even with stock market indexes and the bottom lines of large financial firms bouncing back, small businesses can expect a longer slog to economic health.
In August the Small Business Administration released its annual scorecard tallying federal dollars awarded to small business contractors last year.
As the H1N1 swine flu virus starts its second major sweep through the U.S., business owners are bracing for the impact of a worse-than-usual flu season on their workforces. That's reviving debate on a contentious issue: What kind of sick leave should companies offer employees -- and should it be mandated by law?
Here's a telling statistic about the toll the recession is taking on Main Street: This year, the government's top small business lending program got loans to 25,000 fewer entrepreneurs than it did last year.
A government effort to get badly needed cash into the hands of struggling small business owners is slowly gaining momentum, but entrepreneurs seeking the scarce loans are still in for a frustrating ride.
The landscape of lenders willing to work with small business owners has changed dramatically in the last year, but one bank -- Wells Fargo -- has emerged stronger than ever.
Small businesses have shed an estimated 1.6 million jobs this year. That leaves the remaining staffers to pick up the workload left behind -- and even bosses are pitching in. With their employee rosters cut to the bone, business owners are going back to the basics, re-learning to do tasks they may not have handled in years.
Two bills introduced on Capitol Hill in July aim to revise the tax code and get more money flowing into small business coffers.
With Democrats and Republicans fighting a death match over health care reform, some small business owners fear that their priorities will get lost in the fray.
John Halko was halfway through renovating an expanded space for Comfort, his mostly organic eatery in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., when the credit crisis hit. His source of funding -- a home-equity line -- ran out, so he applied for a loan at a local bank. He was turned down.
Wall Street has been on a tear in the past few months, but Main Street is facing a much more jagged road to recovery. While small companies are not cutting staff as quickly as they had been, the job losses continue to mount.
When the borrowing gets tough, the tough keep trying.
Sick of bailout billions? Here's a bit of good news: While the government struggled to come up with a viable recovery plan, one ailing financial market has managed to heal itself.
Want to create jobs? Restaurant owner Rob Redfearn says send some stimulus money his way and he would create 50 jobs within three months.
During her four years as an entrepreneur, Trina Nelson has seen plenty of ups and downs. But nothing prepared her for the crisis last December, when the American economy lay in tatters and her Dallas-based catering business nearly collapsed.
On a blustery January morning, a handful of journalists dutifully reported to a small, ornately detailed meeting room in a corner of the U.S. Capitol to cover a staple of official Washington life: the nonnews news conference. Backed by a phalanx of American flags, three senators stood to demand prompt and bipartisan health-care reform. But no new legislation was announced, and no new compromise had been brokered.
While Washington talks up the importance of small businesses and their vital role in economic recovery, small business owners remain caught in a credit maelstrom.
The days of cataclysmic layoffs may be waning, but companies are still cutting every position they can spare. Employment at America's small businesses, those with less than 50 employees, dropped by another 138,000 workers in July, according to estimates released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP.
The economy is showing signs of revival, but in the small business trenches, companies are still struggling. Sales are down, credit is tight, and the tally of laid-off workers keeps growing. Leading the federal government's effort to shore up Main Street businesses is Karen Mills, now four months into her job heading the Small Business Administration.
As the recession continues decimating Main Street businesses, communities are taking matters into their own hands. From Bowdoinham, Maine, to Chico, Calif., and dozens of cities in between, activists have launched campaigns to stimulate their local economies.
Before I was elected to Congress, I ran a small plastics packaging business in Cincinnati, Ohio, providing products and services, creating jobs and meeting payroll.
Trying to marshal support for health-care reform, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers on Saturday released a report outlining the dire effects the current system has on small companies and their workers.
CIT Group was expected to announce a deal with key bondholders for $3 billion in funding that would stave off a bankruptcy filing for the cash-strapped lender, according to reports published Monday.
CIT and its many borrowers are in limbo.
The small business credit market is about to take another major hit. Six weeks after Advanta abruptly froze all of its 1 million credit-card accounts, lending giant CIT Group faces potential bankruptcy.
Rich Gallo says he can't afford to provide health insurance for his nine employees. For a long time he put off buying insurance for himself, figuring he needed time to shop carefully. Gallo's desk was piled high with policy proposals when he suffered a heart attack. Lacking insurance, he delayed going to the hospital for several hours.
As if struggling to stay afloat during a faltering economy isn't difficult enough, hundreds of small business vendors that rely on contracts with California are facing another hurdle: There's a good chance the state won't be paying any of their invoices this month.
When Marcia Blackwell and her husband Tom founded Blackwell's Organic Gelato in 2005, they did what many small business owners do: They funded their efforts with a home equity line of credit. The interest rate was then about half that of a traditional business loan, even one backed by the Small Business Administration, and the money was available fast.
As Congress prepares to do battle over health reform, a parallel dispute is shaping up among small-business groups that are staking out opposing positions on a key element of reform proposals: whether Uncle Sam will take on a bigger role in offering insurance coverage or leave the field to the private market.
Despite emergency stimulus measures, small business lending continues to fall. In the just-ended quarter, the Small Business Administration's flagship program backed 30% fewer loans than it did a year ago, and 55% fewer loans than it did in 2007, before the recession set in.
In 2008 a lucky engineering firm snagged the top spot on a list of leading small business contractors to the federal government. Based in Alexandria, Va., the company had signed an impressive 39 contracts with government entities ranging from the U.S. Navy to the Department of Energy. The catch? The "small business" in question, VSE Corp., employs 1,920 workers and posted $1 billion in revenues last year.
Tina Ames owns the Craftsmen Cafe, a Clarence, N.Y. eatery that specializes in organic comfort fare such as chicken soup and apple pie. Recently she needed to replace her restaurant's roof, a $7,000 job. Ames was loath to part with that much cash and didn't want to take out a loan.
Louis Sirico had no reason to suspect that he was flooding his customers' email inboxes with content they "didn't really care" about. Sirico is the founder of IndustryWizards.com, a San Jose, Calif.-based professional online network that connects industry experts with one another and provides its 50,000 members with high tech-related content, product reviews, and research via blogs, discussion forums and monthly e-newsletters.
At the sound of a bell's "ding!," the floor of a cavernous expo hall swirls with movement as entrepreneurs in power suits scurry to find their next assigned table. There, a small business procurement officer waits to hear their pitch. The next bell will be in 20 minutes -- a brief window of time, but long enough to potentially kick off a lucrative business relationship.
Struggling small business owners can begin applying next week for an interest-free debt-relief loan through a new Small Business Administration program -- if, that is, they can find a bank to process their application.
One week before its emergency loan program is slated to launch, the Small Business Administration issued guidelines for banks and borrowers on how the new loans will work.
In the midst of a struggling economy, the Small Business Administration is hoping to create jobs and generate wealth in hard-hit urban communities by boosting small-business growth through its Emerging 200 initiative.
When the Senate passed its credit-card reform bill on Tuesday, Senator Christopher Dodd called it "a great day for consumers." But what will it mean for small business owners who've been struggling with inflated rates and unexpected fees on their credit cards?
The Small Business Administration plans to begin dispersing funds in mid-June for a new, highly anticipated emergency lending program, but don't race off to the bank to fill out an application just yet. Many lenders are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for more details from the SBA before they decide whether or not to participate.
Monday marks the start of National Small Business Week (NSBW), a five-day event intended to spotlight the accomplishments of America's entrepreneurs and draw policymakers' attention to the challenges confronting them. But after more than 50 years, the annual Small Business Administration-run event still remains off the radar of many small business owners.
An emergency loan program designed to shore up struggling-but-viable small businesses will open for applications in mid-June, the Small Business Administration announced Monday.
Here's something you probably haven't heard a lot these days: Despite an industrywide credit clampdown, many banks have sustained their lending to small businesses, and some are even making more loans now than they ever did before.
Despite recent encouraging signs in the economy, Americans are having a hard time getting credit and the effectiveness of government programs to spur lending is unclear, a congressional bailout watchdog said Thursday.
Thinking of floating your small business on the software-as-a-service cloud? Maybe it's time to step back down to Earth.
Geoff Chapin, CEO of green remodeling company Next Step Living, is ready to do his part for our flailing economy. He believes that federal stimulus funds, which include $5 billion for weatherization projects, will trickle down to his Boston-based startup.
More than a month after President Barack Obama pledged "aggressive action" to help small businesses struggling to survive the recession, key government relief efforts are running behind schedule, an audit report released Thursday points out.
President Barack Obama warned recently that small business lending had declined so sharply that the Small Business Administration was on track to back only half as many loans this year as it did last year. The SBA's lending data for the just-ended quarter bears out that bleak forecast: The number of loans the agency backed though its flagship program declined 57%.
With sales down, credit tight and job losses mounting, America's small businesses are struggling - and so far, the Small Business Administration hasn't been able to do much to help them weather the recession. In her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, President Barack Obama's pick to lead the troubled agency acknowledged the problems besetting the SBA but offered few concrete suggestions for addressing them.
Employment at small businesses with 500 or fewer employees decreased by 614,000 positions in March, marking one of the sharpest drops yet in 14 consecutive months of declines, according to an employment report released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP.
It is at least 1,000 pages long. It costs $787 billion. And it's as thick as two telephone books.
At a time when small business owners desperately need loans and credit lines to help them weather the recession, some of the industry's most active lenders have bolted shut the doors to their vaults.
The Small Business Administration is still drawing up guidelines for its forthcoming emergency loans program, a stopgap measure intended to shore up small businesses struggling to keep up with payments on existing debt. But the agency this week confirmed an unexpected twist: Businesses with current loans backed by the SBA won't be able to use the new loans to cover payments on their existing SBA debt.
President Obama vowed Monday to ease the financial plight of the nation's small businesses, which have been hit hard by the recession.
President Barack Obama vowed Monday to ease the financial plight of the nation's small businesses, promising immediate action to revive frozen credit markets.
President Barack Obama vowed Monday to ease the financial plight of the nation's small businesses, which have been hit hard by the recession.
President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Monday will announce administration plans to make lending to small businesses more attractive, two senior administration officials confirmed.
Small companies continue to hemorrhage jobs. Employment at companies with fewer than 500 employees dropped by 576,000 positions in February, according to ADP's latest job report, released Wednesday.
The Small Business Administration is still waiting for a detailed budget and breakdown of its financial priorities for the next fiscal year, but the budget overview President Barack Obama released last week earmarks around $700 million to support the agency in 2010, enough for it to back $28 billion in loans to small businesses.
The number of small business loans banks issue has cratered since the recession took root last year. Rebuilding that number is the focus of the small business provisions in the economic recovery bill that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday.
Bank lending to small businesses has dried up in recent months. One reason credit has grown scarce: They're risky loans. A new analysis of Small Business Administration-backed loans found that the failure rate has hit the double digits, with 11.9% of the SBA's loans last year going into default.
If your business has an online presence, picking a Web host is one of the most critical decisions you'll make. The host manages the servers on which your site will run and literally has control of your company's connection to its customers.
Spot Runner once seemed an unbeatable value proposition for entrepreneurs seeking to maximize their marketing budgets. Launched in 2006, the Los Angeles company helps small businesses create video ads for as little as $499 and target them by zip code on local TV.
Small businesses owners struggling to keep up with their bills may see some relief from a new $255 million emergency loan program authorized this week as part of the economic recovery bill.
With sales down and banks reluctant to extend loans without hefty collateral guarantees, many small businesses are strapped for operating capital. Both the House and Senate versions of the economic recovery bill address this pressing issue, but their proposed solutions are wildly different.
In Brunswick, Maine, the road running through the center of the town is spelled like the state: Maine Street. It's quintessential New England, picturesque and steeped in history - and like so many other downtown districts around the country, Maine Street is filled with small businesses struggling to survive the ongoing recession. But Maine Street's business owners will soon be looking to one of their own for help, when local resident Karen Gordon Mills takes charge as the new head of the Small Business Administration.
The issue of compensating your employees just got a bit trickier.
One of the keys to the various health reform plans kicking around Washington is "pooling." The proposal floated by President Obama during the campaign, for instance, would establish a National Health Insurance Exchange designed to help small businesses and individuals reduce their premiums.
Barack Obama made health-care reform a central promise of his presidential campaign. But the shape any change takes will probably depend as much on Congress as on the new president's plans.
The government's first step toward thawing the frozen market for small business loans will take effect next month, in a behind-the-scenes move to unlock the capital some banks rely on to finance their small business lending.
Small business owners hit hard by the recession have little confidence that things will get better in the coming months, according to two surveys released on Tuesday.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Barack Obama pledged that his efforts to rebuild America's tattered economy would "start with our small businesses on Main Street." Maine businesswoman Karen Mills, Obama's nominee to head the Small Business Administration, will be his point person for that effort. But in a time of tremendous need among small businesses for government assistance, Mills is set to inherit an agency caught in a quagmire.
The small businesses sector in December suffered its largest one-month jobs decline in at least a decade, according to an employment report by payroll processor ADP, which estimates that small companies shed 281,000 jobs last month.
The credit freeze afflicting America's small businesses shows no signs of thawing. In the last three months of 2008, the Small Business Administration's flagship loan-guarantee program backed less than half the number of loans it approved a year earlier - a sign that fewer entrepreneurs are getting financing to start or expand their ventures.
Joe the Plumber must be pleased: President-elect Barack Obama has recently hinted he'll delay his plan to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $250,000 a year. But what will this reprieve really mean for small business owners - should they prepare for an eventual tax hike?
Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Karen Mills has been chosen by President-elect Obama to head the Small Business Administration.
Sales have come to a standstill at many small businesses, and few owners expect improvement any time soon.
What could jump-start the economy? Affordable loans for small business.
What's going well for small businesses? Not much, according to The National Federation of Independent Business' monthly Small Business Optimism Index, which fell 5.4 points in October and landed at the third-lowest reading in the history of the survey.
Riemeier Lumber weathered every economic crisis since 1925, including the Great Depression, but it isn't surviving the latest one. The Cincinnati building materials company will shut its doors November 6, laying off more than 100 employees.
Compared with many U.S construction firms, Premium Stone Surfaces has had a decent 2008. Owners Terry and Lora Mullins have nearly doubled their residential-repair business so far this year, even though their commercial contracts have cratered from 20 in 2007 to two today. But expenses have skyrocketed, and they've had to look far beyond their base in Craigsville, W.Va., to find those residential flooring jobs.
In his Democratic convention acceptance speech sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton declared that as one of the first initiatives of his administration, he would "take on the health care profiteers and make health care affordable for every family."
In speech after speech, presidential candidate John McCain hammers on the claim that his rival Barack Obama will raise taxes on many small businesses.
Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy and the financial markets meltdown it catalyzed blew a hole in small business owners' optimism about the economic environment, according to the latest installment of the National Federation of Independent Business' monthly survey.
President Bush's announcement Tuesday that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will temporarily do away with its insurance caps and cover all deposits in non-interest bearing accounts was a measure aimed straight at Main Street. But critics say the step doesn't address the most critical problem threatening small businesses: slow sales and a sluggish credit market.
When recruiting consultant Fran Quittel heard on her car radio one Friday afternoon in July that her bank, IndyMac, had been seized by federal regulators, she was surprised but unworried. An IndyMac customer for five years, Quittel had both personal accounts and business accounts at the bank, but she was confident her accounts contained less than the $100,000 insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday proposed emergency assistance for small business endangered by America's financial crisis, calling for a "small business rescue plan" of tax incentives and loans.
A growing number of businesses are struggling to land loans through the Small Business Administration's flagship lending program. The number of 7(a) loans given in the 2008 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, dropped 30% from 2007, the SBA reported last week.
Unable to get bank loans and credit lines, small business owners are turning to other sources for the cash they need to run their businesses.
With sales slow and credit almost nonexistent, small businesses - the country's largest employer - face painful job cutbacks.
After 41 years in business, Hull Printing shut down its printing presses for good in March, laying off 19 workers and closing one of the oldest family-run businesses in Barre, Vt. The catalyst: Hull Printing's bank slashed its line of credit, kicking off a death spiral that led to the company's collapse.
David Michaels sports a bona fide mane, sculpted and flowing, like a modern-day Bee Gee. Around his neck hangs his lucky red rep tie from Saks. In his hand: a comb with a built-in laser, meant to foster follicle growth.
With commodity, fuel and insurance costs hitting record highs, small-business owners are anxious about Thursday's federal minimum wage hike, which will require employers in 26 states and the District of Columbia to raise their base to at least $6.55.
Stephani Smith's Maui-based healthy meals delivery company had been thriving since 2004, but needed financial assistance to expand its marketing efforts and Web exposure.
Jody Hall considers herself lucky to be able to offer health insurance to the 55 employees of her two Seattle coffeehouses, Vérité Coffee and Cupcake Royale. But she may not be able to afford it much longer. Her premiums, currently $6,000 a month, took a staggering 40% leap last year. Even that is just for major medical, coverage that she calls "compromised." And it's available only to employees working at least 30 hours a week, who must still pay 25% of the cost.
Have you been a victim of corporate-America layoffs? Look to small businesses for your career future.
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