https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/09/small-business-owners-hiring-uncertainty/
Gift: https://wapo.st/49axOEY
Archive: https://archive.ph/rNLpg

Small companies, which employ more than 40 percent of the nation’s workforce, tend to experience financial shocks more acutely than their corporate peers.



Cyndi Gave went nearly 30 years without ever needing to cut staff at her North Carolina-based consultancy, which advises businesses on hiring and leadership development. But in August, she began calling some of her favorite clients, telling them they had the opportunity to hire The Metiss Group’s “superstar” office manager — a 14-year employee and one of three she ultimately laid off. But the pitch went nowhere. Gave’s clients — mostly businesses with 250 or fewer employees — were also pulling back on spending and hiring. “I was beginning to think it was just us,” she said.

Many small businesses are similarly taking defensive actions as they contend with multiple pressure points, from inflation and a weeks-long government shutdown, to increasingly dour consumer sentiment and rumblings of a recession. They are crucial economic engines in their communities and collectively employ more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce, but they tend to experience financial shocks more acutely than their corporate peers.

“Small businesses play an outsize role in the economy, and they are more vulnerable to what the larger economy is going through,” said KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk. “All the datasets are pointing the same way as far as lower momentum and small businesses doing more with less.”