New York SBDC Research Network

From:  BLS Reports In 2016, 79.9 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.7 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 701,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.5 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 2.2 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.7 percent of all hourly paid workers. The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 3.3 percent in 2015 to 2.7 percent in 2016. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.  This report presents highlights and statistical tables describing workers who earned at or below the federal minimum wage in 2016. The data are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 h...

From:  MarketingProfs Mobile advertising is dominated by two giants, Facebook and Google. In fact,  85% of mobile advertising spend  goes to those two channels, and they both now identify mobile as a primary area of importance for future growth. Facebook's mobile revenue is projected to grow by more than 50% year over year, with Google's growing at a healthy 20%. How did Facebook and Google come to dominate the top of the mobile ad food chain? For starters, each boasts a network of more than a billion daily users. This enables both companies to offer high-quality targeting at a massive scale that most other channels can't replicate. Facebook predicted early on that highly targeted app installs would be popular with advertisers. It guessed correctly, and now Facebook's mobile ad practice fuels  more than 80%  of its $5.2 billion annual advertising revenue stream. Meanwhile, Google has long been the dominant player in search advertising, which makes up t...

From:  eMarketer Video streaming quality issues  continue to be a big problem  for the advertising and media industries. Whether they’re caused by problems with slow internet connections, or  high demand for streaming video content  during peak periods, the continued troubles are turning off viewers and causing headaches for media executives. Finding evidence of video viewers’ distaste for bad-quality video isn’t difficult. The latest example comes from a Q1 2017 study released by video performance and analytics firm  Mux . According to the company’s investigation of US digital video viewers who stopped watching videos due to various streaming issues, about 85% said they gave up because the load time took too long, while a nearly identical percentage said stalling and the dreaded problem of “rebuffering” caused them to end their viewing session.

From  Bplans Starting a business  from scratch isn’t easy under any circumstances. But for members of the millennial generation, many of whom still sit atop a mountain of student loan debt, it can seem virtually impossible. Student debt has risen dramatically in recent years to become the largest single debt source among those under 40. In fact, the average class of 2016 graduate  will be saddled with $37,172 in student loan debt —enough to crush the entrepreneurial spirit of any would-be business owner. Even so, if you have a business idea you believe in, there’s no reason to put those dreams on hold. With some  careful planning  and financial management—and a bit of luck—you can overcome your debt burdens and turn that killer idea into a reality.

From:  SBA National Small Business Week 2017 kicks off at the end of this month with an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. where  national award winners  including the naming of this year’s national  Small Business Person of the Year  will be recognized and awarded for their achievements. National Small Business Week is being held from April 30-May 6 and is an annual event hosted by the U.S. Small Business Administration to recognize the nation’s top small businesses, entrepreneurs, small business advocates and champions. In addition to the awards ceremony April 30 – May 1 in Washington, D.C. with  SBA Administrator Linda McMahon , a roadshow will take place in cities around the country, and several online events. Events throughout National Small Business Week are made possible thanks in part to the support of leading companies and organizers who serve as cosponsors.

From The Outline Google’s Featured Snippets are not only often wrong, they’re also damaging to small businesses that depend on search traffic. CelebrityNetWorth.com launched in 2008 because Brian Warner, a former finance major working at a digital media company, wondered what Larry David was worth. "Honestly, I wanted to know how much money Larry David had," Warner said. "I think Curb Your Enthusiasm had just come back, and I was like, 'God, he must have made so much money from Seinfeld.' I Googled something like 'Larry David net worth' and the results were garbage." According to CelebrityNetWorth.com, Larry David is now worth $400 million. Warner acknowledges that it’s an inexact science, but he and his employees don’t simply conjure their numbers. They look at real estate transactions, news reports of large purchases and salaries, and sometimes even correspond with the celebrity or their reps. Floyd Mayweather, whose net worth Warner estima...

From  eMarketer.Retail A survey of retail executives, the vast majority of them from primarily brick-and-mortar chains, found widespread concern about enhancing the value of their physical stores. The polling from  RIS News  and  Gartner  found that more than one-third of respondents said optimizing stores and upgrading store-level bandwidth and infrastructure would be a top challenge in the coming years. Worry about physical stores fits the industry narrative of the moment, with chain after chain announcing new or expanded efforts to shutter brick-and-mortar locations. A  recent study  estimated that efforts to close stores actually need to be accelerated if the industry as a whole is to address a glut of retail space.