Even Microbusinesses Have a Macro Impact
Every additional microbusiness, Victor Hwang writes, means eight new jobs at the county level.
Good morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
An ad agency in Nashville, whose clients include Mercedes-Benz and Kind, is run by a team of neurodiverse creatives.
More than 750,000 immigrants left the U.S. labor force in the first half of 2025. It’s not likely they will be replaced by Americans.
December’s retail sales came in lower than expected, while January’s job growth was stronger than expected.
The 21 Hats Podcast: Rebuilding a website in 2026 requires answering a very different set of questions.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Victor Hwang writes that even the smallest businesses have a big impact on the economy: “Research by the GoDaddy Small Business Research Lab, a partner of ours at Right to Start, reveals that the smallest businesses have an outsized bottom-up impact on the U.S. economy, starting at the local community. A 1-percent increase in the number of entrepreneurs at the county level, for instance, corresponds with a 2-percent gain in household income—or an extra $1,500 over three years per household, based on the latest available national data. That’s partly because small businesses often spend and sell locally. Their expenditures, products, and services circulate in the community, create economic ripple effects. And they create jobs.”
“Every additional ‘microbusiness’ entrepreneur, according to the new research, is associated with eight new jobs at the county level. That figure has more than doubled since 2020. Meanwhile the Goldwater Institute has found that every 1 percent increase in entrepreneurial activity in a state correlates with a 2 percent decline in poverty.”
“But ironically, the impact of small businesses and entrepreneurship often goes unnoticed—polling shows that most Americans do not know that new and young businesses create virtually all net job growth in America. Perhaps that’s because of the outsized attention given to large businesses. But it may also be due to the fact that starting a business is widely considered too difficult—many Americans are discouraged from even trying.”
“Americans want to start more businesses, and those new businesses would benefit all of us. So why isn’t making entrepreneurship easier and more accessible a bigger priority in America? One straightforward answer is that entrepreneurs are too busy launching and building their businesses to speak up. They don’t have the extra time and/or resources to advocate for their own needs, much less create a collective voice.” READ MORE
