The devastation caused by the flooding in Texas impacts many people and businesses, and small businesses are among those that will likely be feeling the pain, especially in the short term.
That’s according to Paychex CEO Marty Mucci, who says on the flip side, there will probably be a boost to some small businesses.
“The good news there is there will be a snap-back as there’s a need for construction and a lot of what small business does. They will come back and even form more, I think there will be a big increase there as the need will be for small businesses to come back and help them recover.”
Mucci says Paychex also stands ready to help, if asked, to assist with distributing any paychecks or similar items.
He says the Rochester company offered similar help during Hurricane Katrina a number of years ago.
“Back with Katrina, the Red Cross came to us actually, (since we are) such a large payment processor, and said that they were having issues with fraud, with cash payments and pay cards and could they find a way to issue checks that were basically on our bank? And we could get those where people could cash (the checks) in a number of different locations," Mucci told WXXI News.
Paychex does have operations in Texas, and hesays thankfully all of their employees in the area affected by the flooding are ok.
On Tuesday, Paychex also released the monthly Paychex-IHS Small Business Employment Watch. It shows a slowdown in small business job growth nationwide for the sixth consecutive month, but hourly earnings continue to gain momentum, reaching a three percent growth rate in August.
Mucci says in general, the employment picture for small and medium sized businesses is still positive; it’s just that the growth rate has slowed.
