Over a third (38 percent) of small business owners in a recent Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM) “Barometer” survey said they plan to boost wages in the next six months. Wage hike intentions are continuing a long upward trajectory since bottoming out at only 13 percent in the spring of 2009.
“Our small business members have complained for months about the increasing difficulty of getting access to qualified workers, so clearly one way they are responding is by bidding up wages,” says SBAM’s Vice President Communications Michael Rogers.
In other survey results, small business owners said that over the previous six months:
- Forty-nine percent said sales had increased.
- Thirty-five percent said profits had increased.
- Twenty-nine percent said they hired more workers.
Looking forward over the next six months:
- Sixty-one percent said they expect sales to increase.
- Fifty percent said they expect profits to increase.
- Thirty-three percent intend to hire more workers.
Six hundred eighty nine small business owners were interviewed in late fall for this round of the Barometer survey.