Cautious Hiring

The percentage of small-business owners feeling optimistic about the economy fell from 67 percent in a June survey, to 47 percent in July, according to the online payroll service SurePayroll.

The caution among small businesses in many ways reflects what is happening in the broader economy and labor market. Conditions have dramatically improved since the worst of the recession, when companies were laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands. That’s not happening anymore, but neither is the next step needed to drive the recovery forward: robust hiring.

Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency that tracks the job market, said US employers need to create about 130,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth and hold the unemployment rate steady. In July 2011, the nation added just 117,000 jobs, after adding about 50,000 in each of the previous two months.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/08/15/in_survival_mode_small_businesses_cant_lead_on_jobs/