Go Hogs!

Welcome!
Thank you for stopping by the website. We are currently under construction, so please excuse the mess. In this future, this site will be a place to find local & national news stories that may directly impact your small business! This portion of the website is expected to be completed September 1st.

Latest News & Information rss feed | archive

08.22

State’s Jobless Rate Rises to 7.4 Percent

Arkansas’ unemployment rate rose to 7.4 percent in July, compared with 7.2 percent in June. The state’s jobless rate was 5 percent in July 2008 The U.S. rate for July fell slightly to 9.4 percent, compared with 9.5 percent in June. The nation’s unemployment rate in July 2008 was 5.8 percent. Arkansas’ civilian labor force decreased 5,200 in July, the state Department of Workforce Services said. “This unemployment rate increase was not unexpected, with nonfarm payroll jobs declining between June and July,” said Kimberly Friedman, communications director for the department. “Arkansas is still feeling the effects of the recession, though we continue to have a jobless rate lower than most other states.”

Read the full article at Arkansas Business

Posted at 10:09 AM (2 years ago) | Permalink

Tags: Arkansas, Business, Business News, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate, Employment, Jobless Rate, Jobs, Jobless, Recession, Payroll,


Bookmark and Share Subscribe

08.21

Financing your firm with a credit card? Bad idea!

Think twice before slapping down that credit card to cover costs at your new business.

The high cost of plastic credit can drag down growth at a young firm and increase the chance that it will fail in its first three years, according to a study conducted for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

For every $1,000 in unpaid credit card debt, a start-up business increases the probability that it will close by 2.2% on average compared with having no such debt, economics researcher Robert H. Scott said in a report released this month.

“Relying on credit card debt is very expensive and makes these businesses financially unstable,” said Scott, assistant professor of economics and finance at the Leon Hess School of Business at Monmouth University in New Jersey.

Yet almost 6 out of 10, or 57.9%, of the nearly 5,000 firms in the study used credit card debt to get started. The report looked at credit card use by the businesses in 2004, the year they all got going, through 2006.

The negative effect is probably higher today because credit card interest rates and fees have climbed dramatically while credit limits have been chopped. Even mainstream card companies are charging rates of 30% or more in some cases.

At the same time, more small-business owners are relying on plastic to start a business or fund an existing operation because other sources of money have dried up.

Read the full article at the LA Times

Posted at 11:15 AM (2 years ago) | Permalink

Tags: Small Business, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Business, Financing, Recession, Economy, Economics, Small Business Finance, Personal Finance, Debt, Debt Free, Credit Cards, Credit Card Companies, FICO Score, FICO, FPU, Financial Peace University, Small Business Loans, Loans, Lending,


Bookmark and Share Subscribe
Unless otherwise specified Design & Content © by WRE - 2009