New York SBDC Research Network

Table 8. Private sector establishment births and deaths, seasonally adjusted (2003 - current) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

On Wednesday night, the Massachusetts House passed a bill that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2017. The Senate already passed that wage level, and after a procedural vote there it will head to Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who is expected to sign it into law... An $11 wage is the highest passed by any state this year. Eight other states have increased their wages so far... While some worry that higher minimum wages will hurt jobs or businesses, states that already had high wages haven’t had that experience. Washington, which has the highest current wage at $9.32 an hour, experienced the biggest increase in small business employment last year... More from Think Progress .

The SBA Office of Advocacy has released Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories , an annual analysis of each state’s small business activities. In a new and improved format, the profiles feature information on small business employment, industry composition, small business borrowing, exporting, and survival rates, as well as business owner demographics. This annual publication provides information for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. territories and United States.

From MarketingProfs : Who doesn't like free? When I worked at Columbia House, the music club company, our best offer was "Buy 1, Get 1 Free," not "2 for the Price of 1" or "Get 2 at half price." Why did we use "Buy 1, Get 1 Free"? Because it was more enticing to our customers, even though it's the same as "2 for the price of 1" or "Get 2 at half price." We always used this offer. Because it worked! It was our base offer for retaining customers, to which we often added other deals. We tested this offer over and over and it always yielded the best results in terms of customer lifetime value (CLV): i.e., the amount of revenue that a customer yields over time; minus the cost of product, fulfillment, and shipping; plus the cost to market to that customer. CLV also adjusts for the time value of money. The reality is that free is never free for the marketer. There's always an expense that has to be paid, even if

WASHINGTON –The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) issued an interim final rule that will adjust monetary based small business size standards (i.e., receipts, assets, net worth and income) for inflation to allow more small businesses to become eligible for SBA’s financial and federal government procurement assistance programs. The interim final rule was published in the Federal Register this week. SBA is adjusting all industry specific monetary based size standards to reflect the inflation that has occurred since the last adjustment for inflation in 2008. These adjustments are in addition to the recent revisions made to the small business size standards as a result of the SBA’s comprehensive size standards review mandated by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. SBA is also adjusting its program specific monetary size standards with the exception of the new alternative size standard based on tangible net worth and net income that applies to SBA’s 7(a) and 504 loan programs.

I received a request for the number of stay-at-home moms in a particular geography. Posting the inquiry to a listserv, here are some of the responses: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2007 Historical Changes in stay-at-Home Mothers: 1969 to 2009 What I REALLY wanted, though, was: table B23007: PRESENCE OF OWN CHILDREN UNDER 18 YEARS BY FAMILY TYPE BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS . So it also has data for stay-at-home dads as well! One can go to American FactFinder and find data for fair small geographies.

The Economic Census industry snapshots are now available at the state level.