Small businesses across Illinois and America once again are celebrating National Small Business Week during the first week of May. Unlike much of the last decade, however, 1995 gives small-business owners lots to smile about.
For the first time in decades, legislators at the federal and state levels are promoting meaningful reforms that foster job creation and help to grow the economy, that rein in overzealous and costly regulations that perplex and intimidate small-business owners and that reduce the threat of frivolous, expensive litigation.
In recent years, small businesses have been at the leading edge of an enormous economic transition. While large firms continue to downsize, small businesses have been on the rise. Entrepreneurs who employ fewer than 50 people have created 85 percent of all new jobs in America over the last 13 years. Those with fewer than 20 workers produced more than half of all net new jobs. People who once worked for large firms have turned to entrepreneurship by the thousands.
These new voices are being heard and heeded by public officials. Despite general consensus that the U.S. health-care system needs improvement on many fronts, lawmakers listened last year when their small-business constituents told them that employer mandates were a bad idea. Many of the congressmen and state legislators who repeatedly turned a deaf ear to small-business problems suffered defeats in last fall’s national and state elections.
