State of Small Business: Healthcare, Hiring & Funding Survey

Top Level Survey Results including All Small Biz Responses & SMBs with 1-10 employees vs. 11-100 employees

This summary splits the results out by overall respondents first, and then compares at the differences between small businesses with 1-10 employees, versus those with 11-100 employees. The following comparison by business size does not include individual reporting on those 37 businesses who reported their size as 100-500 employees, as these comprise of only 4.4% of respondents.

For answers to individual questions,
Download the full survey report here (PDF 1Mb)

Key Findings

Healthcare Questions:

• 40.9% of businesses with 11-100 employees wouldn’t cancel their employer-provided coverage if there was a public offering.
• 16% of businesses with 1-10 employees would cancel their employer-provided coverage if there was a public offering, as would 15.5% of businesses with 11-100 employees.
• 71.8% of businesses with 1-10 employees do not offer healthcare to employees—versus the 69.4% of businesses with 11-100 employees who do offer healthcare to employees.

Hiring:

For the most part small businesses realize they need to hire to continue growth in the near future, however most of the businesses seem to have halted hiring in the past year.

• In the 11-100 employee businesses, there are approximately 2.5 times more respondents—or 33.3 percent—that are still hiring versus the 13.2% of companies in the 1-10 employee size.
• Smaller businesses report they will take longer to recover from the current economic downturn. In the next three months, only 11 percent of businesses with 1-10 employees are planning on new hires—versus 27.1% of businesses in the 11-100 staff range who are planning to expand.
• Over half (52.5%) of all respondents said the number of employees in their company had stayed the same over the past year.
• 60.7% of businesses with 1-10 employees reported the size of their business had stayed the same over the past year—versus only 26.7% of businesses of 11-100 employees who reported the same.
• More than double the larger business size reported an increase in their employee number—or 34.3 percent—versus just 16.9% of businesses with 1-10 staff reporting an increase.
• Businesses with 1-10 employees reported fewer decreases in their employee size over the past year, with only 20.4% decreasing size - versus 36.3% of businesses with 11-100 employees reporting a decrease.

Funding for small businesses:

Funding of all types continues to be a challenge for small businesses in the recent past. In the future many will try to apply for funding.

• Close to one fifth of respondents applied for funding in the past year, and were unsuccessful.
• 62.6% of all small business respondents did not try for funding in the past year.
• When considering funding for 2010, less than a third of businesses with 1-10 staff are sure they will apply, versus 35.3% of businesses with 11-100 staff who plan to apply for funding.

For answers to individual questions, Download the full survey report here (PDF 1Mb)

Browse the full report below

**Surveys were taken over a 6 week period starting September 22, finishing on October 29. They were entered in anonymously by VerticalResponse customers, and also completed at the Small Business Development Center “Online Marketing Boot Camps” across California. In total there were 831 respondents.