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Snapshots

SMALL BUSINESS SNAPSHOT

MARCH 2023

Washington, March 16, 2023

After another month of newly released economic data and surveys on the state of the country’s small businesses, one thing is abundantly clear: this economy is still not working for Main Street America. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released this month once again confirmed inflation continues to be stuck at unprecedentedly high levels, coming in at 6 percent. Equally concerning, core CPI, which excludes food and energy, and is used by economists to better measure inflationary trends, increased by the most in five months. According to small business owners, inflation remains the biggest issue facing their livelihoods and these economic trends do nothing to assuage these concerns. Worse, President Biden’s proposed budget doubles down on the administration’s failed tax and spend policies that gave us this current economic environment in the first place. Thankfully, with a Republican-led House, these massive Biden tax increases and proposed inflationary government spending will never see the light of day.

The below March 2023 Small Business Snapshot features numbers and updates to provide more insight into the current small business economy.

MAIN STREET MEASUREMENTS:

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX (INFLATION)

  • The prices consumers paid for goods and services increased .4 percent in February as compared to January but totaled a 6.0 percent increase when measured over the last 12 months.

PRODUCER PRICE INDEX

  • Wholesale prices decreased .1 percent in February and registered an increase of 4.6 percent year over year.

JOB OPENINGS

  • At the end of January, businesses were unable to fill 10.8 million jobs, 3.9 million workers quit their jobs, and layoffs increased to 1.7 million.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

  • 311,000 jobs were created in February, and the unemployment rate slightly increased to 3.6 percent. 5.9 million Americans are unemployed.

LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE

  • The labor force participation rate increased to 62.5 percent in February.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS

  • For the week ending March 11, 2023, the Department of Labor reported that initial unemployment claims were 192,000, a decrease of 20,000 from the previous week.