Wealth-Building Through Good Jobs
Strategies for Benefits Providers to
Support Small Businesses’ Growth and Employee Financial Security
Executive Summary
Small businesses provide essential services to the U.S. economy and dominate workforce and firm concentration for the care economy, the infrastructure economy and many aspects of the health economy. Since the 1980s, fewer Americans are working for small businesses as market forces tilt towards corporations with more than 10,000 employees – driving down wages, weakening the resilience of local communities, and emphasizing the need to accelerate good jobs for small businesses to enhance their competitiveness. Around 25 million people in the U.S. lack health insurance coverage, and nearly 50% of the private sector labor force, approximately 57 million people, lack access to traditional pension plans or retirement savings options. Many of these workers are employed by small businesses operating with fewer than 100 employees. This is a significant market opportunity if thoughtfully approached by benefits providers and insurance brokers.
Utilizing data and transcripts across three years of annual impact measurement & evaluation and qualitative co-learning initiatives, Pacific Community Ventures' Good Jobs Innovation Lab formulated the following insights for market transformation.
Missing Market Opportunity
By designing for small business, benefits providers and insurance brokers could access approximately 57 million people who lack access to wealth-building insurance and benefits. Providers can unlock a massive, loyal market that make it easier for employers to say yes and harder for competitors to catch up. Given the market for larger businesses is saturated with well-established companies, there may be competitive bidding processes, whereas small businesses are typically just starting to adopt benefits or are less tied to specific providers, making them easier to onboard and provide tailored solutions to. Benefits providers may also find it easier to retain small businesses because they value trust and relationships which leads to stronger customer loyalty.
Given this context, it is critical to understand the primary barriers hindering benefits adoption. The following section outlines these challenges and presents strategic recommendations in response.
Key Barriers in Small Business Benefit Adoption and Recommendations for Benefits Providers to Tap Missed Opportunities in Small Business Markets
- Barrier: Affordability as a Barrier to Offering Wealth-Building Benefits
- Recommendation: Develop Flexible Payment Solutions for Benefit Products
- Barrier: Knowledge & Awareness Gaps Around Benefits
- Recommendation: Offer Personalized Financial Coaching for Employees & Peer-to-Peer Networks for Owners
- Barrier: Administrative Complexity & Time Constraints for Owners
- Recommendation: Help Businesses Get Started with Technology-Driven Onboarding & Broker-Assisted Recommendations
- Barrier: Historical Mistrust of Financial Institutions & Lack of Culturally Relevant Solutions
- Recommendation: Offer Solutions Through Trusted and Culturally Relevant Channels
About the
Good Jobs Innovation Lab at Pacific Community Ventures
Pacific Community Ventures (PCV) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit impact investor and community development financial institution (CDFI). In 2024, our integrated "loan + advice" model deployed $1OM in loans and helped 2000+ BIPOC, women, and other underestimated small business owners create good jobs with dignity, address racial and gender wealth gaps, and build community wealth. PCV provides restorative capital loans of $10,000 to $500,000 for California small businesses, offered at highly affordable rates for up to 5 years. Employing a restorative framework, PCV also provides critical, wrap-around business advising support for entrepreneurs in the form of free 1:1 mentorship with a business advisor, climate resilience services including specialized climate economy lending products, as well as resources like the interactive Good Jobs, Good Business online toolkit designed to help small business owners implement benefits like subsidized healthcare and paid time off for employees. Supporting the Lending and Business Advising programs, PCV's Good Jobs Innovation Lab leverages data analytics, behavioral economics, and the perspectives of small business owners and employees to re-examine capital structures, product delivery and technical assistance interventions to address barriers to scaling good jobs in the small business ecosystem.
Authors
Destiny McLennan, Ph.D.
Kenneth Kitahata
Contributing Authors
Casey Bell
Sachi Shenoy
Lucia Aguilar
For More Information, Contact
Destiny McLennan, Ph.D.
Director of Applied Research
dmclennan@pcvmail.org
Funder Acknowledgements
We are thrilled to partner with The Prudential Foundation to produce this report, and appreciate their continued support of the Good Jobs Innovation Lab. Additionally, we extend our gratitude to the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire for supporting this report's foundational research on wealth building perspectives for entrepreneurs of color.
INTRODUCTION
Small businesses play a critical role in driving economic growth and creating jobs, yet they often struggle to provide comprehensive benefits to their workers. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, employing nearly half, 46%, of the U.S. workforce, and directly influences economic mobility through access to wealth building benefits including wages, retirement benefits, and profit-sharing plans. [1] However, since the 1980s, fewer Americans are working for small businesses as market forces tilt towards corporations with more than 10,000 employees – driving down wages, weakening the resilience of local economies, and emphasizing the need to accelerate good jobs for small businesses to enhance their competitiveness.[2] Nearly 50% of the private sector labor force, approximately 57 million people, lack access to traditional pension plans or retirement savings options.[3] Many of these workers are employed by small businesses operating with fewer than 100 employees. This small business sector is a vital component of the U.S. economy, generating 43% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and accounting for 39.4% of private sector payroll, which amounts to roughly $2.6 trillion.[4]
For benefits providers and brokers, understanding the financial well-being perspectives of small businesses and creating benefit solutions aimed at accelerating financial wellbeing in underserved communities presents a significant opportunity for client acquisition, while supporting the financial health of the U.S. economy. This report outlines how community-based organizations can influence the availability and help activate adoption of retirement savings options and benefit practices and unlock key insights for benefits providers around client acquisition barriers and opportunities. To guide this analysis, the following research questions were developed:
Research Questions
- What factors lead to or obstruct the opportunity to build wealth for underserved entrepreneurs and their workers?
- What strategies can benefits providers employ to better reach underestimated entrepreneurs and catalyze employer/employee adoption of benefits and retirement savings offerings for wealth building?
To address these questions, the following research approach was employed:
Research Approach
- Client segmentation and cluster analysis of historical data collected through PCV’s Annual Impact Survey (2021-2024). See Appendix (A).
- Qualitative narrative analysis of focus group sessions and 1:1 client interviews with small businesses and their workers. See Appendix (B).
- AI-supported synthesis and analysis of qualitative voice-based surveys administered to small and medium-sized business owners and their employees to assess job conditions and benefits preferences. See Appendix (C).
Key Findings & Takeaways for Benefits Providers
1. Barrier: Cost remains a consistently cited barrier to adopting benefits and insurance solutions → Solution: Benefit products with affordable activation and flexible terms
- All SMB owners responding to employer voice surveys say financial constraints hinder them from offering wealth-building benefits (like 401Ks and employer matching).
“The biggest barrier we have to providing wealth building opportunities for employees is our financial position. We operate with a negative net income, and we continue to burn cash, so we're in a very challenged position when it comes to providing more for our employees besides a fair paycheck, job flexibility, and some other inexpensive perks.”
- 82% cite cost as the top barrier for improving Job Quality, according to PCV impact surveys.
- Ongoing costs to sustain benefits are as crucial as the up-front cost.
“In previous years, I set up a 401k and right out the gate, I said, ‘yeah, let's match, let's go for it.’ And I just didn't know my numbers at the time. It was costing a lot for me financially. I did have to remove that benefit. They do still have a 401k, but there isn't a matching option simply because we have some debt as a business and I'm trying very hard to get rid of that and just be in a better place financially so we can go back to offering that as well as other benefits. So being able to provide things like that would be huge in the future.”
- Cost is especially important as underserved entrepreneurs start businesses in food and retail – sectors with more volatile cash flows
- Affordable benefit products with flexible payment terms could help address challenge of unpredictable revenue streams
“Sometimes we have had to [decline] a big project because we would not be able ... to pay our employees because the company doesn't have the funds in the bank itself to pay the payroll for those three months prior to getting paid. [Last summer our] line of credit was shut down for the lack of it. It was closed and it was turned into a loan. Many factors hinder providing wealth-building opportunities for employees ... [I want] programs where if I get awarded the contract, it could be financed.”
Solution Snapshot:
Flexible Benefit Products
- Emphasize Low-Cost Entry Points: Offer employer-sponsored 401k programs with low initiation fees or products that ramp up over time to market minimum balances. While it’s difficult to determine specific estimates for individual plans, some research suggests startup fees can be as low as $0 - $250, and administrative and compliance costs to sustain retirement benefits can range annually depending on a number of factors including size of business and type of plan.[5]
- Offer Tiered Plans: Build wealth-building programs with a “line of capital” that could be activated in months where cash flow is delayed creating a temporary buffer to honor payroll, retirement deductions, and retirement contributions. Partnering with CDFIs can support this effort by leveraging trusted relationships with underserved businesses and existing lending infrastructure.
- Low-Interest Financing or Lines of Credit: As business owners are hesitant to take out more debt - at high interest rates – to service debt, offer products with an escalating interest rate that starts low in the first 30 days, then steadily increases. Provide “credits” or interest-free borrowing against the line of credit if the company does not borrow against it for a continuous 12 months. CDFIs could be potential partners in deploying this solution ethically, flexibly and affordably. Referring to a non-profit CDFI may be a preferable source of support in overcoming trust barriers with potential clients.
- Pooled Employer Plans (PEPs): Registering as a Pooled Plan Provider (PPP) and offering PEPs can support businesses facing high up-front and ongoing costs in adopting and sustaining benefits. Pooling together multiple employers can lower administrative costs and streamline fees. PEPs also present a scalable solution—as businesses grow, there’s no need to switch to another plan down the line. These can also support businesses in the administrative complexity, time constraints, and capacity barriers faced by employers in adopting and sustaining retirement benefits.
For benefits providers, offering flexible benefits products like the above builds trust among employers and increases retention, provides access to newer markets like underestimated small-to-medium sized businesses, leads to more enrolled users, and increases uptake and revenue.
2. Barrier: Even when retirement benefits are offered, workers may not fully understand the benefits being offered and may face competing financial priorities. Knowledge gaps → Solution: Offer Personalized Financial Coaching for Employees & Peer-to-Peer Networks for Owners
- Employees tend to be younger and not fully appreciate retirement benefits: 84% of employees at PCV businesses fall between 18 and 35 years old.
- Employers and employees both say that most workers are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t adopt a longer-term view
“At previous jobs, where I made a significantly less amount of money, it felt like I really only had enough to pay bills and feed myself and was not able to start a savings [account] and everything.”
- Only a quarter of workers who responded to worker voice surveys asked for 401K plans. (30% of workers already had access to 401K plans through their employers).
- 36% of workers, however, expressed a strong desire for personal financial coaching – vs 401Ks -- to improve their budgeting, reduce debt, save regularly, buy a house, understand the stock market, and optimize their retirement plans.
“I wish that I had access to retirement savings or advice about how to do retirement savings at [an earlier] stage of my life.”
- While state retirement mandates aim to improve financial security, they do not always include tailored support to guide underestimated small businesses through this transitional process. To serve the pressing needs of underestimated communities, benefits providers can position themselves to assist small business readiness in state retirement mandates.
State-Sponsored Benefits Plans: Spotlight on CalSavers
As regulatory pressure grows, state-sponsored plans are reshaping the benefits landscape. For example, as California legislation continues to expand employee benefit mandates, employers with five or more employees must offer a retirement savings option, and those with one or more employees will be mandated to provide a retirement savings plan option or be immediately enrolled in the state run CalSavers program by December 2025. This will force thousands of businesses, many for the first time, to confront and adopt retirement benefits for their employees, creating a new pool of customers for benefits providers offering better alternatives. Because California will impose financial penalties on employers who are noncompliant ($250-500 per employee), businesses are highly motivated to find providers and experts that can help navigate through administrative complexities quickly and thoroughly. Providers can build sticky relationships with small businesses impacted by CalSavers since this may be their first time working with a benefits provider. Ultimately, state-sponsored benefits plans like CalSavers presents growth opportunities for benefits providers who may offer better, tailored, and more supportive solutions.
Employee ownership models are an innovative approach to addressing knowledge gaps among workers and enhance adoption and worker financial health by building a culture of collaboration and trust: 78% of these employee-owned businesses provide wealth-building benefits compared to only 18% for traditional businesses.
Employer Spotlight:
Reem’s Vision
A passionate community organizer and artisanal chef, Reem Assil launched Reem’s California in 2015 with a clear vision to create a vibrant Arabic restaurant in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission district. Serving an array of cultural dishes and freshly baked bread, Reem’s mission “is to be an anchor space that provides good jobs, delicious, nourishing food, and a home to many."20 A founding contributor to the Good Jobs Fellowship Program, Reem has demonstrated a deep commitment to the financial health and well-being of her workers as well as her broader community.
As a former worker-owner herself, Reem always envisioned transitioning her business into a worker-owned cooperative. Originally, she had hoped to reach a healthy level of profitability and business stability before embarking on ownership restructuring. However, operational challenges exacerbated by the pandemic and the ensuing economic slowdown compelled Reem to act swiftly to support her team. During a pivotal moment, Reem and her workers began developing internal strategies to re-establish themselves as a work-cooperative, propelling them towards her once far away goal. Reem quickly realized that she needed to invest in her staff if they were going to succeed. She explained, “You have to equip people and train them so that they not only feel like they have the tools, but they build the confidence to think and act like worker owners.”
Since the pandemic, Reem and her team have been in the process of transitioning to a representative cooperative model. However, their journey has not been without serious setbacks. During a one-on-one interview with PCV staff, Reem candidly discussed the challenges of model conversion and navigating unforeseen hardships with her staff. She explained the continuous employee upskilling, management restructuring, and legal requirements needed to fortify the business. Despite these struggles, Reem remains committed to the cooperative model, believing that the new version of Reem’s will foster shared prosperity and a sustainable workplace for her team while also allowing her focus more authentically on life-long vision and Reem’s legacy.
Solution Snapshot:
Personalized Coaching Provided by Benefits Providers
- 1:1 Financial Coaching: Offer employees access to personalized financial coaching that addresses budgeting, debt management, and retirement planning. Tailored guidance can empower workers to make informed financial decisions and improve long-term stability.
- Activate Peer Networks: Inspired by initiatives like Lafayette Square Institute’s Worker Solutions, which connects employees to curated resources, introducing peer networks could encourage shared learning and peer mentorship.
- Share Case Studies for Employee-Ownership: Evidence from PCV’s impact data show a growing segment of businesses have adopted alternative business models that empower workers with a tangible stake in the company’s success. These employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), employee ownership trusts (EOTs), worker cooperatives, and profit-sharing plans often lead to higher job satisfaction, increased productivity, and deeper sense of company loyalty.[6]
3. Barrier: Small businesses operate with small HR teams and limited expertise in choosing benefit plans, facing administrative complexity in adopting benefits→ Solution: Help Businesses Get Started with Technology-Driven Onboarding & Broker-Assisted Recommendations
- Small businesses often operate with small HR teams with limited understanding of benefit plans
“I would like my HR officer and my mid-level manager to have access to the Good Jobs website and resources. I think the whole company would benefit, as I don't have time to be the one person to finds and digests all of that material. I would also like it if there were some sort of networking or mentoring opportunity, so I could talk to other new, small business owners with similar values as I have, and so my HR officer could do the same.”
- Businesses adopt benefits in a predictable pattern, with low-hanging fruit like direct deposit or stable scheduling first and costlier benefits like retirement savings last.
- Businesses with tenure, higher revenue, and on a "Good Jobs" pathway are more likely to offer wealth-building attributes including retirement savings and profit sharing: Cluster analysis of PCV impact data shows businesses with wealth-building benefits enjoyed higher revenues and steady incomes, likely creating the financial cushion to invest in worker benefits. See Appendix (B).
Solution Snapshot: Onboarding & Broker Recommendations
- Tech-Driven Onboarding: Implement technology-driven onboarding to reduce burden on busy entrepreneurs and help them efficiently establish employee benefits.
- Broker-Guided Solutions: Continue to equip brokers to recommend tailored, bundled benefit packages or identify easy-to-implement “quick win” solutions that align with small business needs.
- Flexible Benefits for Evolving Workforces: Recognizing that nearly a quarter of surveyed businesses rely on part-time, contract, or fractional workers, introduce accessible “micro-benefits” designed to support these employees as businesses scale and transition to full-time staffing models.
4. Ultimately, Benefits Providers Must Design with Trust and Cultural Relevance
- Underserved owners turn to personal networks rather than institutions, according to PCV research: 62% of SMB owners rely on other business owners for support and information
- Providers must work through vetted third-party platforms or trusted sources where entrepreneurs feel confident they are receiving actionable, unbiased guidance rather than a sales pitch.
“The [advisory] program was designed to connect people like me from underserved communities with affluent wealth managers to teach us how to grow our business, scale our business, and get funded. The piece that hasn't worked out was the how to break barriers to open the door for me to get these things.”
“Get coached on what you can do ... I have to deal with the here and now and future thinking doesn't sell my product or pay expenses. I believe there is a disconnect with how the coach could actually help my company.”
“Unfortunately, the three mentors I was paired with were unreliable. The last one was determined to sell me products and services offered by her and those in her network ... I started receiving an abundance of advertising after I met with her.”
Conclusion
This report highlighted four critical barriers—affordability, knowledge gaps, administrative complexity, and historical mistrust—that continue to hinder benefit adoption among SMBs. By implementing flexible payment options, providing personalized financial coaching and peer networks, leveraging technology, and delivering solutions through culturally relevant and trusted channels, benefits providers can begin to close this gap. These strategies not only respond directly to the lived realities of SMBs and their employees, but also lay the groundwork for more inclusive, sustainable financial wellbeing across the workforce.
Appendix
A. Annual Impact Survey (FY2021-2023)
This report uses PCV’s historical data collected annually from 2022-2024 from the Annual Impact Report (AIR) survey, which is administered annually from January to March by the PCV Good Jobs Innovation Lab. The survey is sent out via email to PCV’s active loan portfolio and business advising clients. Through an iterative learning approach, the annual survey is designed to measure the impact of PCV programs and better understand the client journey, allowing for an ongoing analysis of how shifts in the macroeconomic environment impact client needs and priorities. By repeating the survey annually, the data collection process captures changes over time, enabling PCV to adapt its programs and support services to better address the evolving needs of our clients. This continuous feedback loop helps ensure that the programs remain relevant and effective in meeting clients where they are at.
PCV’s FY2023 Annual Impact Survey can be viewed here.
B. The characteristics of PCV client businesses (taken from 2023 AIR, published in 2024)
In its most recent 2024 impact report, PCV reported serving 1,129 small businesses nationwide through lending and advisory. 77% are small businesses led by people of color, and 62% are led by women-identifying entrepreneurs. PCV’s investees have a median of three full-time employees and are most heavily concentrated in the food service and retail trade industries (comprising nearly 35% of the portfolio combined). Health care, social assistance, professional services, manufacturing, waste management, and construction are other prominent sectors that receive PCV support. 84% of PCV’s loans are deployed into low to moderate income (LMI) communities in the state of California.
C. Cluster Analysis
This report applied advanced machine learning algorithms in Python to conduct cluster analysis on Annual Impact Survey data between 2021 and 2023. Using this form of robust analysis allowed the Lab to segment client data into distinct clusters, or groupings, to assess shared characteristics, such as industry, age, and business size.
The dataset comprised 826 employer businesses, which the Lab systematically partitioned into 7 distinct clusters.
Definitions of the 7 Clusters
The seven clusters were defined after multiple rounds of unsupervised machine learning algorithms were applied in an attempt to find clean delineations (or “separations”) between a large number of variables, such as reported revenue, profitability, race, gender, age of business, number of employees, industry, and job benefits offered. It is difficult to draw black-and-white distinctions between all the characteristics that comprise each cluster, but here are a few generalizations:
- Cluster 0*: Concentrated in the Transportation and Retail sectors, with an average of 10 employees. Likely to be profitable.
- Cluster 1: Concentrated in the Arts & Entertainment sectors, with an average of 4 employees. Most broke even and were profitable. More likely to be White-owned.
- Cluster 2: Diverse industries, with an average of 4 employees. Business owners were more likely to fall short of their personal income goals. More likely to be operating at a financial loss. Disproportionately likely to be Black-owned.
- Cluster 3: Younger businesses (average age = 3.7 years old), heaviest concentration in the retail and professional services sectors, with an average of only 2 employees. Large concentration of BIPOC business owners. Business owners were most likely to fall short of their personal income goals. Disproportionately likely to be operating at a financial loss. More likely to be women-owned.
- Cluster 4: Concentrated in the Arts & Entertainment sectors, with an average of 2 employees. Almost evenly split between Black and White-owned businesses. Disproportionately likely to report profitability. More likely to be women-owned.
- Cluster 5*: Slightly older businesses (average age = 4.7 years old), concentrated in Arts & Entertainment and Real Estate sectors, with an average of nearly 5 employees. Larger concentration of businesses that reported breakeven and profitability.
- Cluster 6: Diverse industries, more likely to report profitability, and an average of 3 employees. However, this cluster has a large concentration of BIPOC business owners who were also unlikely to achieve their personal income goals. More likely to be male-owned. * Denotes the clusters that were more likely to offer wealth-building.
PCV conducted a clustering analysis to separate small businesses into two groups based on if they offered wealth-building benefits or not. Businesses were clustered based on panel data from baseline and follow-up annual surveys, including:
- Revenue
- Personal income of the owners
- Number of employees
- Business age
- Industry
- Demographic characteristics of business owners, including gender and race
Clustering was performed using the K-Prototypes model which looks for patterns among both numerical data like revenue and categorical information such as race. The analysis revealed two distinct groups of small businesses. One group of established, mature businesses with higher revenues showed strong adoption of wealth-building practices. This first group is shown in clusters 0 & 5 in the chart below with the highest levels (in orange) providing wealth-building benefits. In contrast, the other group who lagged in offering wealth-building benefits were the emerging, lower-revenue businesses with fewer employees (Cluster 3 & 4).
The first group with strong wealth-building characteristics enjoyed higher revenues and steady incomes, likely creating the financial cushion to invest in worker benefits. For instance, these mature businesses reported revenues 14x higher than their counterparts with revenues of $890,000 vs $61,000. Additionally, this first group with leading job quality had been in business nearly twice as long with an average of nine years versus five years in operation.
This accumulation of financial and human capital with a longer business history may lead to the valuable experience necessary to invest in worker benefits. Finally, this first group of All-Star benefit providers came from traditional backgrounds such as White-identifying owners compared to Black entrepreneurs in the second group, reflecting systemic disparities of the financial system.
D. Co-Learning Sessions and 1:1 Interviews
Narrative Interviews
In 2022, the PCV Good Jobs Innovation Lab invited nineteen, referred to as “co-researchers,” to share their entrepreneurial journeys in a collaborative environment. The PCV Lab hosted five virtual Narrative Interview sessions, each lasting roughly 90 minutes, in which between two to five PCV clients shared their personal stories and entrepreneurial experiences. Using a narrative interview framework, PCV designed a semi-structured interview model that enabled clients to tell their stories and collaborate freely. PCV Lab applied a Critical Participatory Action Research framework, integrating critical race theory and feminist epistemology into research facilitation. Cultivating a co-learning space, participants were provided two grounding questions in advance and were encouraged to bring their own inquiries to foster a more interactive and participatory discussion.
Good Jobs Fellowship Program
In the spring of 2023, PCV hosted its inaugural Good Jobs Entrepreneurs Fellowship program. This three-month initiative featured community learning sessions and weekly at-home surveys designed to foster open dialogue about employee benefit adoption and leverage peer-to-peer collaboration. Fourteen distinguished Good Jobs Fellows, selected based on their accomplishments in advancing quality employment practices, were asked to participate in this pioneering Good Jobs program. Of the businesses included in the peer learning community, all fourteen offered full-time employees subsidized health insurance and at least two weeks of paid time off, along with annual employee performance reviews. Worker-centered, nearly eighty percent of these businesses provided financial incentives for employee performance, with three small businesses offering ownership stakes or profit-sharing benefits to their workers. The intention of the programs was to identify both key incentives and pressure points driving or hindering small business from creating and sustaining good jobs. In 2021, the Lab created the Good Jobs, Good Business Toolkit, which expands the definition of “Good Jobs” beyond wage to encompass a range of essential benefits, including paid time off, flexible schedules, retirement plans, profit-sharing, and other employee supports. Evaluating the effectiveness of the Toolkit in promoting benefit adoption, the PCV Lab analyzed insights from weekly employer and worker surveys to create a sequencing approach for small businesses to iteratively improve job quality over time. Narrative interviews and Good Jobs community learning sessions were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were then coded and analyzed by members of the PCV team, with the support of AI, to identify and categorize key themes.
In 2024-25 PCV scaled this practice to collect feedback from 21 small business owners and 77 of their employees over the course of a six-month period. Surveys consisted predominantly of open-ended voice-based responses to questions that assessed employer and employee definitions of economic stability, economic mobility, and equity and voice, and the factors that support each theme. Transcripts were coded and analyzed by the PCV team with the support of AI.
Citations
U.S. Census Bureau. (2023). 2023 Annual Business Survey. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs.html
Chen, Anqi & Munnell, Alicia. (2022). Why Do Some Small Businesses Offer Retirement Plans? Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. https://crr.bc.edu/why-do-some-small-businesses-offer-retirement-plans-2/
Economic News Release (2023). Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ebs2_09212023.htm
Prosperity Now. (2023). Black Entrepreneurs Breaking Barriers: The Impact of Systemic Racism on Black Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from https://prosperitynow.org/blog/black-entrepreneurs-breaking-barriers-0
Brockland, B. & Cepa, K. (2023) Boosting Financial Health Benefits in the Small Business Workplace. Financial Health Network. https://finhealthnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/FHN-Wells-Fargo-Small-Business-Report-2023-1.pdf
Fairlie, Robert W. (2020). The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence from the First Three Months after Widespread Social-Distancing Restrictions. NBER Working Paper No. 27309. National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27309
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