Small Businesses Believe They Will Lead the U.S. out of Recession
FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinko’s), an operating company of FedEx Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!fdx/quotes/nls/fdx (FDX 89.25, -0.12, -0.13%) , today released the results of its third annual Signs of the Times national small business survey, just ahead of National Small Business Week. The study found that small business owners are eager to lead the charge out of the country’s protracted recession — with almost three-quarters (72 percent) saying they will be the driving force behind the U.S. economic recovery in 2010. In fact, 51 percent of the small business owners polled say their businesses have already or will fully recover by the end of this year.
This optimism is a marked improvement over the survey’s findings last year, when 54 percent of respondents indicated they were very concerned about the economy’s impact on their business. Further evidence of this brighter outlook is that 18 percent of small businesses are considering an increased budget for staffing and HR activities in 2010, up from just 9 percent last year.
