North Carolina is home to more than 1 million small businesses, employing 1.8 million people and accounting for 99.6% of all businesses in the state. They play a significant role in our state economy and workforce. However, national economic uncertainty coupled with an especially fast-changing business landscape has required small businesses to adapt, yet again.
Today, Senior Public Policy Director Awesta Sarkash, submitted a letter to the Speaker of the House and Senate Pro Tempore of North Carolina opposing legislation that would eliminate the state's corporate income tax. This is not a priority for small businesses and most small businesses do not benefit from this.
On February 10, Public Policy Director Awesta Sarkash sent a letter to the North Carolina House Committee on the Judiciary in support of HB 45. This legsilation would give North Carolinians a fair chance and help expand the state’s skilled workforce by making it easier for entrepreneurs and jobseekers to obtain occupational licenses.
This blog is adapted from Small Business Majority Founder & CEO John Arensmeyer’s conversation with small business owner Mo Johnson in the video series Inside Small Business Policy.
Small business owners across the Tar Heel State know it makes good business sense to take care of the people who work for them. However, they often struggle to provide key benefits, including paid family and medical leave, which they believe would help them recruit and retain their workers. With small businesses struggling to compete with large companies that can offer attractive benefits packages, it should come as no surprise that small business owners support establishing a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program that would make it easier for them to facilitate their employees’ access to the paid time off they need to support their families while keeping their jobs.
Small Business Majority’s new poll of North Carolina small business owners reveals strong support for legislative solutions that would remove barriers for justice-impacted individuals by making reforms to occupational licensing and debt-based driver’s license suspensions. These politically diverse small business owners believe these measures would enable employers to tap into an underutilized workforce and open up opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Sisters Lakila Bowden and Kamille Richardson are reframing disability and disproving myths that providing accommodations for differently abled employees is expensive and burdensome to businesses through their consulting company, iSee Technologies.
On May 4, Small Business Majority's National Women's Entrepreneurship Director Rachel Shanklin submitted a letter to North Carolina House Leadership in opposition to Senate Bill 20, legislation that would ban abortion procedures except in very limited instances. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion, threatens the health, independence, and economic stability of women small business owners and their employees.
Small businesses in North Carolina are still struggling to hire and retain a ready workforce, persistent challenges in the wake of the pandemic.
While small businesses employ nearly half (46.4%) of the private workforce in the United States, many are struggling to hire and retain a ready workforce. One viable solution to their persistent workforce challenges is the passing of Clean Slate policies, which seal and expunge certain criminal records and allow justice-impacted individuals to seek employment opportunities and entrepreneurship. Individual state analyses of small business responses in Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas found widespread support for Clean Slate policies at the state and federal level.
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