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Small Business Job Growth Slows Down In May

The latest monthly survey on small business job growth released by Paychex  and IHS shows a small decline in that growth in May, following steady results in March and April.

Paychex CEO Marty Mucci says it appears that some of the declines in growth happened in states where lawmakers recently raised the minimum wage.

“States that have minimum wage increases had less job growth than those who didn’t; so we do think that wage increases, particularly for small businesses, may make you a little more cautious about hiring.”

Mucci says raising the minimum wage, and other regulatory changes, tend to have more of an impact on part time jobs, and he notes that is where a lot of job growth in small business has been happening lately.

Mucci says the fact that this is a presidential election year may also make some small businesses reticent to do a lot of hiring.

“I think an election year always makes small businesses a little more cautious because they’re not sure what’s going to happen with taxes, what’s going to happen to other reforms, paid leaves, minimum wage, things like that that the new administration may want to try to put into effect quickly, they want to be careful and not hire and then have to backtrack.”

The latest Paychex survey also showed that some of the strongest small business job growth was in the southern states.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.