The U.S. labor market has cooled down—a development that was predicted by the Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index last November when the small business employment growth rate began to decline and the overall number of small business jobs began to drop. In fact, the index predicted the negative job growth small businesses have seen for 11 of the last 18 months.
In 2024, small businesses lost jobs for six straight months, seeing only a slight increase in employment in July and flat growth in August. These declining employment numbers reflect the challenging macroeconomic conditions emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic—and cutting interest rates could provide relief. Still, the Index indicates that further and broader action is needed from Washington to ease conditions and support small business creation and expansion.
