According to the ADP National Employment Reports small business created 78,000 jobs in January. The highest employment contribution among small businesses was from businesses with less than 20 employees and that accounted for 56% of the employment contribution growth. Analysts as well as small business entrepreneurs are eager to begin the New Year with great news about the economy. Follow the links to read more about financial news and Obamacare.
What small business owners should know about the new Obamacare report
Despite some media reports, the health care law isn’t killing 2.5 million jobs.
Congressional budget analysts on Tuesday released revised estimates concerning the economic footprint of the health care law, spawning another round of headlines declaring that Obamacare will take a massive bite out of workers’ hours and eliminate millions of jobs.
Thing is, that’s not what the report said at all. In fact, the nonpartisan group’s predictions actually refute some of the warnings from small business leaders — namely, that the law will force employers to trim hours for their current workers and think twice about hiring new ones.
Still, there are some other areas of the law that the group says may indeed have unwanted side effects for companies.
Bank of America boosts small business lending as it hires even more bankers
Bank of America said Tuesday that it made almost $11 billion in new loans to U.S. small businesses in 2013. The bank also plans to hire 200 small business bankers this year, many on the West Coast.
The bank’s pace of small business lending last year was up 26 percent over 2012. California’s largest bank has seen small business loan originations rise every month on a year-over-year basis for the past three years. That may reflect the bank’s initiative to hire 1,000 small business bankers that began in late 2010.
Emily Shanks, BofA’s small business banking region executive for the West, based in Concord, told the San Francisco Business Times in May 2012 that the hiring, which included 31 small business bankers in the Bay Area up to that point, allowed for more face-to-face meetings between bankers and small business owners at their place of business.
When counting both new and renewing financing, BofA’s small business lending exceeds $22 billion.
GroupMe Founder Gets $3.4M to Make Small Business Loans More Accessible With Fundera
In the past five years, the number of bank loans under $1 million has dropped by more than 20 percent. This puts small business owners, arguably the driving force of our economy, at a severe disadvantage when it comes to starting a business.
But Jared Hecht, co-founder of startup success story GroupMe, alongside cofounders Rohan Deshpande and Andres Moran, is today launching a totally new service called Fundera, built specifically to facilitate small business funding through alternative lending.
Fundera has received a total of $3.4 million in funding from Khosla, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, and various angel investors including Strauss Zelnick, Rob Wiesenthal, David Rosenblatt, and David Tisch.
