New York SBDC Research Network

Baby Boomers — nearly 80 million of them in the U.S. – will redefine traditional retirement. The first boomers turned 65 in 2011, and year after year for the next 18 years, masses of them will choose to work beyond the ages of 62 to 65, the range long thought of as retirement time. There’s been a lot of conversation lately about boomers and the ‘unretirement’ movement. In fact, AARP predicts that a whopping 80% of boomers will have to work into their retirement years. The vast majority of them will move away from high-pressure corporate positions to reshape their professional lives as small business owners, consultants, part-time workers or “giving back” careers such as teaching or non-profit management. And what we’re seeing right now is the tip of the iceberg. More from the ASBDC .

Startup Rates Where are the jobs created? New or existing businesses? What is the level of availability and coverage of health insurance in small firms? Do economic or industry factors affect business survival? What is the difference between self-employment nonemployer businesses and sole proprietors? Credit Card Financing and Small Business Read all about these topics HERE .

Here is a http://www.labor.state.ny.us/stats/PDFs/enys0212.pdf the February 2012 Employment in New York State newsletter. Note the lead article, "Who Creates Jobs?" One of the most widely held beliefs about the U.S. economy is that small businesses create the most new jobs. Statements over the past 30 years by political leaders (see above) reinforce this notion. However, recent research by John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Census Bureau economists Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda (hereafter listed as HJM) found that the accuracy of this idea is“subject to a host of statistical and measurement issues.” These issues include: • How large is a “small” business? • How do we measure “job growth”? • Is the age of the business considered? This article takes a closer look at the issues outlined above, using New York State data from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS).

Report for March 2010 . *Export-supported jobs linked to manufacturing account for an estimated 3.1 percent of New York's total private-sector employment. More than one-fifth (20.9 percent) of all manufacturing workers in New York depend on exports for their jobs. (2008 data are the latest available.) *A total of 27,329 companies exported goods from New York locations in 2007, the third highest number among the 50 states. Of those, 94 percent, or 25,657 firms, were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with fewer than 500 employees. *SMEs generated more than half (55 percent) of New York's total exports of merchandise in 2007. That is the third highest percentage among the 50 states and well above the national average of 30 percent. *In 2007, foreign-controlled companies employed 433,600 workers in New York. This was the second largest total among the 50 states (only California was greater). Major sources of New York's foreign investment in 2007 were the United Kingdom

This was an interesting juxtaposition. On the one hand, this site features the results of a 153 city-survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, proposing a roster of "shovel-ready" projects (mostly relating to infrastructure creation & improvement) that just need a bit of funding to get them off the ground. Obviously, these projects are being touted to Congress in the hopes that it will spur badly-needed job creation. On this same site, and not much later, however, was a retort by two different taxpayer watchdog groups (call it the Fairness Doctrine in action, if you want). They argue that the bulk of the Mayors' proposed projects were not long-term solutions to job creation. Instead, they believe that the projects were pork in the guise of a stimulus package, and were worthy of the axe. These appeared during the lame-duck period, and things have certainly changed since then. I find the back-and-forth fascinating, but am not quite sure whom to believe.