Here's some good news for small business: Economic reports show that most job growth in the country this year has come from small- and medium-size businesses.
That trend will only accelerate, according to the recently released Small Business Index from the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Nearly 3.8 million new jobs will be created by small businesses with fewer than 100 employees in 2011 -- that's enough to lower the U.S. unemployment rate by 2.4 percent.
The survey, conducted in January, also found that only 2 percent of small businesses planned to lay off workers.
Major health insurance companies nationwide are reporting dramatic increases in small businesses offering health insurance to employees. This reverses a trend for small businesses dropping insurance because of affordability.
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This is not what opponents of health-care reform said would happen if Congress passed the Affordable Care Act.
They warned strenuously that small businesses would not only stop hiring out of fear of the future, but would begin laying off workers because of anticipated new taxes, fees and health-insurance mandates under "Obamacare."
Small businesses also were supposed to start dropping health insurance because the ACA would drive up premiums.
These dire predictions continued right up until last year's November elections, according to Frank Knapp, president and CEO of The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, writing for The American Forum.
Fortunately, the gloom-and-doomers were wrong. Those who supported the ACA have tried valiantly to put out more realistic predictions about how the ACA was going to help small businesses.
There will not be new taxes, fees or health-insurance mandates for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees (approximately 96 percent of all businesses). But it is hard to get that message through the media clutter.
Now the good news for small business is rolling in, and the positive future effect of the now one-year-old ACA is becoming clear.
More than four million U.S. small businesses with fewer than 25 employees are eligible to receive health-insurance tax credits under the ACA.
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That's 87 percent of all small businesses in the country that the ACA can help by making health insurance more affordable.
As for the ACA dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance, a senior vice president at Harvard Pilgrim says that the federal law has only increased premiums by 1 percent.
The one year anniversary of the ACA is something small businesses should celebrate for what it has already done. The future will be even better.
