Small businesses can’t win.
We need help, but the jobs we used to be able to fill for $10 an hour now want $15 or more. My cost of goods has gone up about 25% in 6 months.
I used to be able to sell 36 printed t-shirts for $6.95 each and make 10% net. Now, just to make the same $.70 per shirt, I have to charge over $10 per shirt. Ink is more expensive. Parts for my equipment are either unavailable or much more expensive.
But continue to be a jerk and just tell me to pay my employees more. Yeah, that will help.
There are a lot of folks here who hate business owners for some reason. I suppose they have been burned in the past, especially for IT.
I can tell you that my husband’s business is paying $17 an hour plus benefits, for entry-level jobs that are typically filled by teenagers. And our cost of living here is low. He has given across-the-board raises as well. He is not losing employees, most of his employees have been with him over ten years and enjoy their jobs. But business volume is at a point that he needs more employees and cannot find them. He is hiring people over the phone and pretty much anyone who shows up at the door (that is legal). He puts ads on indeed and other places and gets few calls, and some that do, never show up.
It is the same with businesses all around him, including white-collar jobs.
He has not raised prices yet, but the cost of materials is going up a lot and that is coming. We have personally taken a cut in income to pay our employees more, and he is also working 60-70 hours a week right alongside his employees (again, doing jobs teens would normally do). If the mandates ever happen, that is likely the end for his business. He’s not going to do that to his employees.
But to listen to some people on here, these types of business owners do not exist. They do, and he knows many doing the same thing he is. Working their backsides off, trying to juggle keeping employees happy, keep the business going, and keep the product affordable. It is NOT easy