The Top 10 Cities Where Small-Biz Jobs Are Growing

The Top 10 Cities Where Small-Biz Jobs Are Growing

6) Dallas, TX
Flickr/Ron Doke
By Millie Dent

Small businesses have been hiring, though at a slower rate than this time last year, according to the Paychex|IHS job index.

For the 11th month in a row, Dallas’s small businesses have shown the most employment gains. The city boasts the top 12-month growth rate at 1.38 percent. Detroit (1.35 percent), San Diego (1.27 percent), Baltimore and St. Louis (both 1.13 percent) round out the top five. Houston’s recent performance is also impressive, with a rebound in growth rates over the past three months compared with declines during the rest of the year.

Related: This Is the Best Time Since the Recession to Get a Small Business Loan 

Only five states saw positive gains in employment rates over the past year, and none of them increased by a full statistical point. One notable state is Michigan, which ranks second behind Wisconsin, as the state with the highest employment gains in small businesses since 2004. It also came in second for highest gains in the past year.

The index numbers used by Paychex for cities and states is based on the current small business employment rate as compared with 2004. Paychex uses 2004 as the base period to compare current gains against because it was a year of expansion for small businesses. Below 100, and the rate is lower than in 2004. Above 100, and the rate is higher than in 2004. 

The charts below rank the cities and states based on their index levels.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times

How Snapchat Wants to Win the 2016 Election

By Millie Dent

Snapchat is getting a lot of attention for its presidential ambitions.

In an effort to both appeal to the youth vote and bolster its events coverage built on a growing volume of video posted by its users, the app recently posted a job opening for a Content Analyst in Politics & News.

The new hire will curate photos and videos for the app’s “Our Story” curated events coverage of the presidential race and other news events. That stories feature has already proven to be a massive success. On average, Snapchat’s Our Stories draws around 20 million people in a 24-hour window, director of partnerships at Snapchat, Ben Schwerin, told Re/code. The three-day story in April about Coachella, the music festival, generated 40 million unique visitors.

Political events might not be draws on that same scale, but Snapchat apparently believes its massive influence with younger Americans could attract millions millennials to engage in the political process at a time when voter turnout is at its lowest levels since World War II. In the 2012 mid-term election, the national turnout rate was 35.9 percent. Of that, only 13 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.

Related: Can ‘Project Lightning’ Give Twitter a Fresh Jolt?

Boasting more than 100 million daily users, Snapchat is valued at $16 billion — giving it the reach and the financial clout to become a force in 2016 campaign coverage. About 60 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged between 13 and 24 have used the app, according to The Financial Times. The largest demographic of users is between the ages of 18 and 24 (45 percent), followed by those between 25 and 34 (26 percent).

To capitalize on that user base, Snapchat recently hired former CNN political reporter Peter Hamby to oversee its expanding news team. Snapchat wants to promote content from debates, rallies, appearances and other election events and allow users to follow along. But this isn’t purely an experiment in civic participation. Candidates can pay for political ads to appear on the social media app.

The social media app has an ace up its sleeve to incentivize candidates to purchase ads. The app already has age-gating technology and a form of geographic targeting. Originally put into place to make sure underage kids wouldn’t see alcohol ads, the age gate could be used to reach only voting-age users. The geographic targeting allows Our Stories to only be viewable by people in the same city or area, so politicians could target specific areas, especially ones in a tight race.

Snapchat, best known as the service that allows users to send disappearing photos, claims that ads inserted into “Our Stories” have an advantage over other social media advertisements because they leave more lasting impressions.

If campaigns buy into that and turn to Snapchat as a way to connect with a hard-to-reach demographic, the social media company could be the big winner in the 2016 election.

Coming Soon: Free Wi-Fi From Google’s Sidewalk Labs

Google’s latest startup wants to use technology to improve city life.

Judge narrows Google patent suit against Microsoft
Reuters
By Suelain Moy

Google is about to hit the streets with Sidewalk Labs, a Google startup that will focus on developing new technologies to improve urban life. Billing itself as an “urban innovation company,” Sidewalk Labs was founded to tackle urban problems such as housing, pollution, energy consumption, and transportation with the goal of making cities “more efficient, responsive, flexible and resilient.”

The first project? In New York City, LinkNYC will replace aging pay phones with slim, aluminum pillars that provide free high-speed Wi-Fi. The hubs also will allow people to charge their mobile devices and look up directions on touch screens. Qualcomm will be the wireless provider

Related: Why Google’s Internet Balloons May Be a $10 Billion Business

According to the Federal Communications Commission, 17 percent of the population, or 55 million people, in the United States don’t have access to high-speed broadband. Sidewalk Labs hopes that projects like LinkNYC can help bridge that gap.  

For the LinkNYC initiative, Google acquired and merged two companies -- Control Group and Titan -- into a new venture called Intersection, which aims to provide free, public Wi-Fi in cities around the world using such familiar urban infrastructure as bus stops and pay phones.

Related: Google Spends More Than Any Other Tech Giant to Influence Congress

Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former Bloomberg CEO and deputy mayor for New York City, has been tapped to head Sidewalk Labs. Doctoroff, who conceived the idea for Sidewalk Labs with a Google team headed by CEO Larry Page, told Wired, “The vision really is to make cities connected places where you can walk down any street and have access to free ultra high speed Wi-Fi. The possibilities from there are just endless.”   

Just don’t give us any automated, self-driving taxis, please.

Presidential Candidates Respond to SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling

REUTERS/The Fiscal Times
By Josh Stelzer

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Thursday may have kept the health care law and its insurance subsidies in place, but that doesn’t mean Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” the law are done. Major GOP presidential candidates took to Twitter following the Supreme Court’s announcement to blast the high court’s decision. Here are their responses and those from the Democratic candidates.

This Is America’s Biggest Financial Fear

iStockphoto
By Beth Braverman

More than 60 percent of Americans are losing sleep at night because of financial concerns, and the biggest concern is that they’re not saving enough for retirement, according to a new report from CreditCards.com.

The second-biggest worry is about the cost of education, with half of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying that concern keeps them up at night.

The percentage of Americans worried about education costs has been growing for the past eight years and is the only category that has become a bigger problem since the Great Recession. “Unless something slows the rapid rise in college costs, this could soon be Americans’ biggest financial fear,” CreditCards.com senior analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.

Related: 12 Smart Money Moves Millennials Should Make Right Now

That echoes a Gallup poll released in April, which found that 73 percent of parents with kids under age 18 ranked paying for college as a financial worry, more than were concerned about saving for retirement or covering medical expenses.

Nearly one in three Americans are losing sleep because of medical bills, 27 percent are worried about their mortgage or rent payment, and 21 percent fret over credit card debt.

Older Americans and those with higher incomes seem to have fewer financial anxieties than younger generations. Less than half of those age 65 or older are losing sleep over their finances, versus more than two thirds of adults 64 or younger. Of those making less than $75,000 per year, 69 percent had financial worries, compared to just 51 percent of those making more than $75,000.

Millennials Still Don’t Trust the Stock Market

Exclusive: NYSE in talks with SEC to settle data probe
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg

Goldman Sachs has released the latest in a long line of surveys about millennials and money. The findings won’t shock you if you’ve seen other such surveys: millennials get financial advice from their parents, they’re less concerned with privacy, they still want to own a home … someday.

But one familiar finding may be worth highlighting. Even as the stock market reaches record highs, millennials by and large remain wary of investing. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed by Goldman said that stocks are “the best way to save for the future.” Another 45 percent said they’re willing to dip a toe in the market or to put money into low-risk options. More than a third of those surveyed said they don’t know enough about stocks or felt that the market is too volatile or too stacked against small investors.

Part of that may because many millennials haven’t yet reached the life stage or the level of financial stability that would lead them to consider investing. But the lingering scars of the recession are evident in the results, too — and financial institutions clearly have a long way go to restore the public’s confidence in them. For example, Gallup just published a report called, “Why It’s Still Cool to Hate Banks.”

Related: The Rise of a New Economic Underclass—Millennial Men​

Goldman didn’t release the details about how many millennials it surveyed or when (and it hadn’t yet responded to an email asking for those details by the time of publication), but the results it got are broadly in line with those of earlier surveys. And they’re another reminder that not everyone is benefitting from the stock market’s record-setting rally. Millennials are still missing out.

Here is a chart produced by Goldman Sachs summarizing the results of their survey: