President Donald Trump’s approval rating among small-business owners reportedly has hit an all-time high.
A total of 64 percent of small-business owners approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, the highest approval rating for Trump among entrepreneurs since CNBC and SurveyMonkey began conducting a quarterly survey in 2017.
The percentage of small business owners who say they “strongly approve” of how Trump is handling his job reached 47%, also a new high; it had never been above 40% in previous surveys.
“This is a high watermark for President Trump’s job approval, both among small business owners in our survey and among the general public,” said SurveyMonkey senior research scientist Laura Wronski.
“Part of this is just partisanship,” Wronski said. “One key way in which small business owners differ from everyone else is that they are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats by a pretty wide margin. That’s not true among the general population, which is split almost evenly and even slightly skewed to the Democratic side," Wronski said.
"Trump’s job-approval numbers are consistently higher among small business owners than they are in national polls, solely thanks to the fact that many more small business owners are Republicans than Democrats.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s job approval remains at 49%, according to a new Gallup poll. It ties his highest job approval rating yet for the president, who had scored the same mark in a Gallup poll released Feb. 4. His disapproval rating in the current poll is 48%.
Gallup speculated Trump’s approval rating may be high because of the Senate acquitting him in the impeachment trial. American’s generally positive perceptions of the state of the nation also are listed as a contributing factor.
Meanwhile, small business owners have received some upbeat news on the economy this month, the Associated Press explained.
Retail sales figures released last week howed that consumers were inspired by unseasonably warm weather to spend on their homes in January, but that overall sales growth was modest. The Commerce Department reported a 0.3% gain last month following a 0.2% gain in December.
Although economists called the report disappointing, they noted that more consumers are working, a good omen for higher retail sales in the coming months. January employment reports from the Labor Department and payroll processor ADP showed strong job growth at companies of all sizes.
The ADP report also showed that small businesses are joining larger companies in stepping up their hiring. ADP's business customers with up to 49 staffers added 94,000 jobs in January after creating 66,000 positions in December. The two-month showing was a big improvement over the nearly 31,600 new jobs ADP counted on average each month in 2019. In 2018, the monthly average was 52,000.
Nearly a third of the new jobs in the January count were at manufacturers, ADP said.
Business owners may be ready to take more risks after curtailing their hiring last year, and manufacturers who were being squeezed by the Trump administration's trade tariffs are likely feeling more optimistic after the U.S. and China signed a truce agreement. Owners held back amid uncertainty about the economy last year, and a tight labor market made it hard for many owners to find qualified job candidates.
The coronavirus that has infected more than 73,000 people globally could hurt many small businesses if the outbreak is prolonged. Some small companies have reported they've lost business because of the outbreak. And others are struggling to find components for manufacturing and merchandise for stores because factories in China were shut, first because of the weeks-long Lunar New Year holiday and then due to the virus.