By coinnews 
00:00 Dave Briggs
Well, every year, the Small Business Administration takes one week to celebrate independent businesses with fewer than 500 employees, better known as small businesses. According to the SBA, over 99% of companies in the US are small businesses, representing 46% of all jobs. And this year’s theme, empowering business owners for the future, aims to quote, recognize the hard work, resilience, entrepreneurial spirit, but small business owners also face challenges. Holly Wade, NFIB executive director, joins me now to break down some of the hurdles that small businesses are currently facing here. According to the NFIB’s latest jobs report, labor continues to be a challenge here. Why is that?
01:29 Holly Wade
So the labor shortage for a number of industries is still historically very high, and that includes construction, transportation, manufacturing. They’ve been having a hard time finding and attracting qualified applicants for historically high levels of job openings over the last number of years, but it has continued into 2025, and there doesn’t seem to be much of sight at the end of the road for them. Unfortunately, they have a lot of demand, they have a lot of work on the books, is just filling those positions is becoming very difficult for them.
02:51 Dave Briggs
How is lack of clarity around trade policy weighing on small businesses from what you’re hearing and getting a pulse check on?
03:08 Holly Wade
So tariffs are adding a lot of uncertainty to small business owners, whether they anticipate being directly impacted, if not already, or indirectly impacted, whether that’s because they’re in the supply chain of the in the supply chain or whether they are just anticipating a slowdown in economic activity that might impact them. So the level of uncertainty again is historically very high. It’s been high for a while, but it continues to be so, just with kind of different issues that are facing them that they don’t quite know yet how or to the degree of which some of those policy shifts will impact impacting them.
04:45 Dave Briggs
While we’re talking about policy, one of the other major policy implications for small businesses could be what comes forward in the negotiations and hopefully ultimate netting out of a return to the tax cuts and jobs act, uh, 2.0, we should say. And you know, as we’re thinking about that, that has yet to really have a course charted forward yet. What are small business owners looking for there?
05:37 Holly Wade
Sure. So they’re looking for permanency for those tax cut and jobs act provisions that are set to expire at the end of 2025, especially the 20% small business deduction that’s been so helpful for them to retain more profits, reinvest those profits into their business, especially over the last number of years where economic conditions have been quite a roller coaster for a lot of them, including trying to absorb high inflation that are impacting their business. We still hear from a good number of small business owners saying inflation is a driving factor, big problem for them in operating their business. So retaining those savings through the TCJA from 2017 will go a long ways in helping them and avoid a tax increase in 2026.