Tom Keene Talks to William Dunkelberg
Tom talks with William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, about small business and the economy
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The small business optimism index dropped to 90 in June. What’s going on?
Here we are two years into the alleged recovery and the optimism index is still firmly in recession territory. During the recovery in ’83, ’84, two years out from the bottom in ’82, the index was 12 points higher.
In ’83 and ’84, the oldest boomers were in their thirties. That’s when you buy a house. We’re seeing the opposite here, aren’t we?
Housing is absolutely dead in the water. By demographic terms, we should be doing 1.5 million starts. We are doing 500,000. That is a million starts missing with who knows how many new jobs per start—four or five.