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The finding that younger people prefer weaker intellectual property rights is consistent with past studies that have found similar results when examining attitudes toward file sharing on the Internet.145 There does appear to be a generational divide concerning intellectual property protection. Interesting, here, is that most past research has focused on individual attitudes towards copyright protection, primarily in the context of the Internet, while the present study finds an age effect for the full population, across the patent and copyright conditions. This study appears to be the first to indicate that the generational divide concerning intellectual property rights cuts across intellectual property domains. Perhaps more surprising, the regressions reveal that having lower income correlates with a desire for stronger intellectual property rights. One possible explanation for this result is that the popular notion of the small innovator hitting it big with a creative achievement may be particularly attractive to those with lower income.146 For those with higher income, intellectual property rights may be perceived as being more likely to interfere with established business operations. Consistent with this analysis, smaller companies tend to prefer stronger patent rights than larger companies, in part for these reasons.147 The study also finds an overall effect on intellectual property strength preferences with respect to an individual’s education: being more educated correlates with a preference for greater intellectual property protection. Though the causal explanation for this relationship is not necessarily clear, more educated individuals may tend to perceive a greater likelihood of being able to personally profit off of their own creativity or inventiveness. In addition, more educated individuals could place a higher value on creativity and innovation.

The current state of the law hurts small innovators in at least two ways: first, it impedes their ability to attract capital investment. Venture capitalists and others are more likely to feel comfortable investing in research-intensive startups and small businesses that have patents to secure their rights. If patent protection is unavailable or uncertain in specific areas of technology, it will be harder for those startups and small businesses to receive funding. 11 If those businesses start disappearing from the U.S. or never get started in the first place, or are started in other countries with stronger patent systems, America’s role as a global technology leader will suffer. Second, small innovators who lack access to robust, reliable patent protection will be less able to defend themselves against competitors, especially large, established competitors, who might copy successful products. Also, because the established competitor did not have to incur the research and development costs to create that successful product, it will be easier for them to undercut the smaller innovator on price. Even if the smaller innovator has a patent, if it is in a technological area falling within the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court’s line of § 101 cases, the established company can bet that it will have at least a reasonable chance of invalidating the patent if it is sued for infringement, possibly quite early in the litigation without that company incurring many litigation expenses. Academic researchers in areas with uncertain or unavailable patent protection also will face similar difficulties if they make discoveries with great potential for becoming consumer products because they will have trouble finding private sector partners and investors. For example, research that could lead to a new diagnostic tool will typically take significant investment beyond the initial laboratory success, including the expenses involved in FDA approval in many cases. Without patent protection to deter would-be copiers, the private sector will take its investment dollars elsewhere and the academic research will remain merely academic.

IP-savvy business leaders believe that, in a world where battles are increasingly being waged not for control of markets or raw materials but for the rights to new ideas and innovations, the management of intellectual property must become a core competence of the successful enterprise. Though still a minority among their peers, they nonetheless lead some of America’s most successful companies, including Microsoft, Lucent, IBM, Dell, Dow Chemical, and Gillette. These leaders all recognize that the knowledge economy has given rise to a new ecology of competition in which intellectual assets rather than physical assets are the principal wellsprings of shareholder wealth and competitive advantage.

Big, established companies typically build on their investment in distribution and brand while innovation often arrives as a result of imitation or acquisition.   Because new product attributes, often protected by IP law, have to be acquired—whether by purchase or imitation (e.g. YouTube, in the case of Google) — these larger corporations prefer that it be cheap.  Imitation and acquisition is cheaper   if there are no effective IP rights to be concerned about.   As a result, larger companies will typically call for reform that pushes too far against effective IP protection.

What is overlooked in the debate is that the policy goal should be economic growth through quality jobs, i.e. employment for the “knowledge worker” and investment in new businesses.  This brings into focus the effect of weakening IP protection on smaller companies.

Intellectual property rights, especially patents, not only safeguard a firm's innovation. They also foster venture capital ("VC") financing. In a 2009 study investigating how patent applications and grants held by new firms impact their ability to attract VC financing, the authors found that investors rely on patents as signals to overcome the tremendous uncertainty involved in assessing the prospects of potential portfolio companies. 50Link to the text of the note The study found that in the presence of patent applications, VC financing occurs earlier. Confirming the findings of earlier work, this study further establishes that for startup firms the patenting process generates valuable quality signals that assist them in obtaining funding. 51Link to the text of the note Patents are believed to reduce information asymmetries between financiers and innovators, thus spurring market entry by startups. 52Link to the text of the note Fundamentally, patents facilitate access to VC financing, market entry, and job creation. Without patents and an effective IP environment, the process stalls, and, in some cases, firms may never emerge. Admittedly it is difficult to find evidence of what might have been. However, there are some striking examples of firms unable to secure a patent that lost their VC funding and disappeared. Case in point: Innate Immune. Stanford immunologist Sam Strober developed a new treatment for Lupus [*877] and founded the startup Innate Immune. 53Link to the text of the note After recruiting Dr. Andrew Pearlman as CEO, the former director of clinical research at Genentech, Innate Immune lined up venture capitalists ready to commit $ 30 million to develop the drug. 54Link to the text of the note Unfortunately, the firm was unable to secure a patent due to the slow pace of approvals at the underfunded and overburdened U.S. Patent Office. 55Link to the text of the note The venture capitalists withdrew their funding, and the firm, the drug, and the jobs never materialized. 56Link to the text of the note The 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey of Entrepreneurs found that 76 percent of venture-backed entrepreneurs and 67 percent of all entrepreneurs believe that patents are absolutely essential to obtaining funding. 57Link to the text of the note

Reddit Inc. getting its artificial intelligence story right was a big part of a successful listing day on Thursday. Shares gained 48% on the social platform's trading debut from its $34 initial public offering price. Now the communities, forum-based platform has to go out and prove that selling user data to AI companies is a viable business. The basic pitch is that Reddit's going to grow 20% a year, in part by licensing its users’ data to builders of large language models. Those LLMs are the very large neural networks that are trained using massive amounts of text and data, including e-books, news articles and websites like Wikipedia. That plan could work because Reddit has exactly that — lots of text. And investors like the idea of selling that data because it will supplement a longer-standing, but still young advertising business that helped Reddit post $800 million in sales last year, although the company reported a net loss of $91 million. “There's the new emerging market of AI, where large language models need data to train on,” Reddit's Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong told me on Bloomberg Technology. “And when you look at Reddit's corpus, 19 years of human experience organized by topic with moderation and relevance, that's incredibly important to building both the chat capability and the freshness of information.”

Copyrights and trademarks are essential tools for businesses that want to protect their intellectual property and safeguard their brand identity. Here are some of the top benefits of copyright and trademarks:

Legal Protection: Copyrights and trademarks provide legal protection from any unauthorized use of a company’s intellectual property. This protection can prevent competitors from using your company’s branding, logos, or other intellectual property in a way that could cause confusion among customers or dilute your company’s reputation. Brand Recognition: Trademarks help to build brand recognition and brand loyalty among customers. By registering a trademark, businesses are able to distinguish themselves from their competitors and create a unique identity that customers can easily recognize and remember.

Government can also play an important role in creating more favourable market conditions for the ASP services. Several areas are important, such as further development of ICT Mastructure, liberalisation of telecommunication markets, adoption of consumer protection and environmental product policies. By liberalising the telecommunication markets the government can effectively promote competition and reduce service prices. Governments can assist creating higher consumer and business confidence by a stronger enforcement of privacy rights and copyright protection. Governments can also contribute to the confidence building by showing an example of using application renting (ASP) services for their own activities.

The fashionable view that intellectual property (IP) rights impede economic growth in the U.S. is on its way to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The negative view of patents, copyrights and other IP is so prevalent that they may in fact come to threaten the creation of new, high quality jobs, if not destroy thousands of existing ones. The question of who benefits from weaker IP rights takes on a new sense of urgency when viewed through the filter of the recession. National unemployment is reported at 10%. Without intellectual property protection, the promise of quality employment in a knowledge-based U.S. economy will be threatened despite promises made by policy makers to promote a knowledge workforce in lieu of erecting barriers to international trade. Weakening of the copyright and patent laws not only runs counter to the interests of the U.S., it is a breach of the social contract made in the past between Congress and the American worker. . Under the rubric of trade globalization the Federal Government acquiesced to the export of manufacturing jobs to places like Mexico and China while promising that these job losses would be offset by the creation of new U.S. jobs and wealth in a knowledge-based economy. The best known example of this policy is the passage of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) in 1995. The U.S. was not alone in this regard. According to an OECD report from 1996, “OECD countries continue to evidence a shift from industrial to post-industrial knowledge-based economies.” (The Knowledge-Based Economy, OECD, Paris, 1996.) But this implicit agreement between the U.S. government and the American worker is under threat of being breached. Viewing IP rights as an impediment to growth threatens to jeopardize this implicit agreement. Google says that “Once a driver of creativity, our patent system now poses a hurdle for innovation.” (Michelle Lee, Head of Patents and Patent Strategy, Google). But it is important not to confuse the notion of product “acquisition” or “imitation” with actual “technological innovation.” Big, established companies typically build on their investment in distribution and brand while innovation often arrives as a result of imitation or acquisition. Because new product attributes, often protected by IP law, have to be acquired—whether by purchase or imitation (e.g. YouTube, in the case of Google) — these larger corporations prefer that it be cheap. Imitation and acquisition is cheaper if there are no effective IP rights to be concerned about. As a result, larger companies will typically call for reform that pushes too far against effective IP protection. What is overlooked in the debate is that the policy goal should be economic growth through quality jobs, i.e. employment for the “knowledge worker” and investment in new businesses. This brings into focus the effect of weakening IP protection on smaller companies. Small businesses have been proven to be the most innovative. The anecdotal evidence of world-changing technology companies that started in a “garage” is borne out by statistics. The U.S. Small Business Administration, in March, 2009, reported that “[s]mall patenting firms produce 13 times more patents per employee than large firms do, and these patents are twice as likely as those from large firms to be among the one percent most cited [by] others in their patent applications.” The latter statistic means these are quality patents or at the root of a larger technological wave of innovation. Therefore, it is the smaller companies that seek to file and obtain patents that are later judged pioneering. But weakening of IP protection under the rubric of “patent reform” threatens to limit investment in these smaller, innovative companies and their likelihood of success in the face of well-healed competitors who wish to free-ride on their achievements. There are several proposed changes to U.S. patent law that will likely render IP law weak protection for small businesses. These changes include a “race to the patent office” system for priority between competing inventors, increasing fee costs to small companies building an IP portfolio, increasing the existing hurdles to prove infringement while giving imitators several opportunities to force small businesses to prove the validity of their inventions (see Sec. 5 of the Patent Reform Act of 2009). These procedural changes will be readily exploited by imitators of technological innovation because of the sheer cost to defend against them: costs most small businesses are incapable of sustaining. It is dangerous to put smaller, innovative companies in such a precarious position. Smaller firms like those that produce quality patents represent a large fraction of high-tech jobs in the U.S. For example, in the U.S., 32 percent of jobs in computer-related services are in a firm with less than 100 employees. (An International Comparison of Small Business Employment, Schmitt and Lane, Center for Economic Policy Research, August 2009). To weaken IP rights for these smaller companies represents a threat to their existence because larger foreign companies will have more of an opportunity to exploit the inventions of these companies by imitation without payment. This threatens the job growth that these smaller companies provide in this country. And it should not be overlooked that the loss of engineering jobs goes hand in hand with the loss of other service jobs. If an innovative company is lost, not only do the engineering jobs go, but the support jobs as well. Adopting policies that let these high-quality jobs go overseas is a breach of the contract between the Federal Government and the American worker made in the early 1990’s.

“My business too small, nobody would copy my IP” “IP is for big boys” As a small or medium business owner, you may believe that your intellectual property (IP) isn't worth registering. You might also think that your company is too small to attract infringers, or that registering your IP is only necessary for big corporations with larger budgets. However, this is far from the truth. In fact, Small Medium Enterprises (SME) need IP Registration more than big corporation. They are often more vulnerable to IP infringement than larger companies. Without proper IP protection, your business is at risk of losing valuable assets and revenue. In this article, we'll explore why SMEs should prioritize IP protection and how registering your IP can be a smart investment for your business's future. WHAT IS IP? First, let's define what we mean by "intellectual property." Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, and names used in commerce. IP is an intangible asset that gives exclusive rights to the creator or owner to use their creation for a certain period of time. There are four types of IP that SME owners should be aware of - trademark, patent, copyright, and industrial design. Trademark is a symbol, word, phrase, or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of a product or service from others. Upon registration, the protection is forever, subject to renewal of every 10 years. Patent protects an invention and gives the inventor exclusive rights to make, use, and sell their invention for 20 years. Copyright protects original works of authorship, such as books, music, and artwork. Industrial design protects the visual appearance of a product. Upon grant, it confer protection of 25 years. WHY SMEs NEED IP PROTECTION? 1. Low-Cost Investment That Can Save You Money in the Long Run Registering your IP may seem like an unnecessary expense, but it can actually save you money in the long run. If your IP is infringed upon, the legal fees and damages could be much higher than the cost of registration. By investing a small amount upfront to secure ownership of your IP, you can avoid costly legal battles down the road. 2. Registration of Intellectual Property Establishes Your Ownership and Builds Your Reputation As a small business, you may be just starting to build your brand and reputation. Registering your IP is the only way to prove your ownership. Without registration, your brand and reputation are at risk, and you may lose your brand, customers or market share. On the other hand, it also adds credibility to your business and can help build trust with customers and investors. 3. Your Intellectual Properties Are Valuable, Regardless of Your Company's Size You may believe that your business is too small to attract the attention of infringers. However, this is not always the case. Your IPs are valuable, regardless of your company's size. By registering your IP, you can protect your business from competitors who may try to steal your ideas. On the other hand, how do you know no other people would come out with the same creation as you do? 4. Registered Intellectual Property Can Help You Secure Funding If you're looking to grow your business, securing funding and partnerships is essential. At this point, investors will want to see that you have protected your IP, and their investment is safe. Registered IP is a valuable asset that can increase the value of your business and make it more attractive to investors. It shows that you have taken the necessary steps to protect your assets and intellectual property. 5. Use Intellectual Property As A Leverage To Scale Your Business As a SME owner, you can leverage your registered Intellectual Property to scale up your business by recruiting licensees. You may grant the rights to use your IP to licensees in exchange for a fee or royalty payment. These licensees can help you generate revenue without the need of you investing significant resources into manufacturing and distribution. This can expand your market reach and increase your profitability. To attract potential licensees, you should have a strong IP portfolio that demonstrates the value of your creations, which can make you an attractive partner. Therefore, licensing intellectual property is a valuable strategy for small businesses looking to scale up their business. 6. Prevent Infringement Just because you are a small business, it doesn't mean that others won't copy your ideas or products. In fact, SMEs are often more vulnerable to IP infringement because they have limited resources to fight against it. By registering your IP, you can prevent others from using or copying your ideas or products and protect your business from unfair competition. In summary, SMEs cannot afford to overlook the importance of IP protection. By registering your IP, you can protect your assets, establish your ownership, and build your reputation. It's a low-cost investment that can save you money in the long run and help you secure funding and partnerships. Don't let your company fall victim to IP infringement – prioritize IP protection today.

A  by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) provides useful support for those working to develop and protect valuable IP rights. It reveals that European startups with a stable portfolio of] intellectual property (IP) rights are significantly more likely to secure early-stage venture capital (VC) funding, with the likelihood being over 10 times higher than for those without such rights.

This revelation comes amidst a flourishing European startup ecosystem, which has seen VC deals skyrocket from EUR 9.4 billion in 2013 to an extraordinary EUR 110.8 billion in 2021, thanks in part to a maturing European VC industry and surging global investment interest.

Many entrepreneurs know that patents can be used to increase the value of the company with investors. But many do not realise, that this does not only apply to patents. When raising capital via professional crowdfunding service providers or other investors, entrepreneurs need to understand that investors typically view the protection of intellectual property (IP) as a critical aspect when evaluating potential investment opportunities.  IP holds significant importance from an investor's perspective. Here's a broader look at IP from the investors' viewpoint:

Asset Value and Valuation: Intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights, represents valuable assets for a business. Properly protected IP can significantly enhance the overall value of a company, influencing its valuation during investment rounds.

From January through March, the U.S. economy expanded at just a 1.3% annual rate, the slowest pace in nearly two years, and Kose said the World Bank forecast took the first-quarter slowdown into account. The pullback was due largely to factors that economists view as temporary: A surge in imports and a reduction in business inventories. By contrast, the core components of economic growth — consumer spending and business investment — remained solid in the first three months of the year.

The global and especially the U.S. economies have proved unexpectedly resilient in the face of high interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to curb the high inflation that flared up in 2021.

A better-than-expected jobs report on Friday displayed the resilient strength of the U.S. economy, even after years of high interest rates and stubborn inflation.

Employers hired 272,000 workers last month, blowing past economist expectations of 190,000 jobs added, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4%, reaching that level for the first time since January 2022.

A new report out today warns that the economy may be contracting. This morning’s Services PMI report from the Institute for Supply Management was a complete disaster. The U.S. Services PMI came in at 48.8%, down from 53.8% last month and from 53.9% this time last year. That’s a nearly 9.5% drop year over year. What does this mean? It seems that the fastest rate-hiking cycle in history is starting to have an impact… and it’s not good. To explain my argument, we need to dive into the services data and why it matters. What Is the ISM Services PMI? The Institute for Supply Management Services PMI is a monthly, survey-based indicator of activity in the U.S. services sector. The index, which gathers economic information from more than 15 industries, including healthcare, finance, and retail, monitors business conditions by tracking five variables: Business activity. New business. Employment. Inventories. Supplier deliveries. It’s an important read on future economic activity, and ultimately on inflation or disinflation going forward. Generally, a reading above 50 signals growth and below 50 indicates contraction. Historically, this tends to be a leading indicator for both the economy and the stock market. Weakness tends to precede recessions, as it suggests corporate profit growth is likely to underwhelm or turn negative. This also ties back into the movement we’ve seen in Treasury prices and yields this week. Services PMI and Treasurys: A Recession Warning Now, it seems like the spike in yields this week in Treasurys was just a fake-out. The lower services reading spiked odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut. However, it’s important to remember that the Fed’s actions have delayed consequences. Once the central bank cuts rates, it will take several months to feel the effects. It’s also important to note that this is not a guarantee that the Fed will cut rates. In fact, it has good reason to NOT do so, based on credit spreads indicated almost no default risk. But what if credit spreads are currently mispriced relative to the probability of a recession. If this is the case, the Fed has been fooled and a recession is coming. At the very least, investors should buckle up for the next three months. A great deal of volatility is ahead.

The US economy faces recession risks with potential for a 30% stock market drop, according to BCA Research. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 left its scars unhealed, and the Covid-19 economic downturn dealt the US one more blow. Concerns regarding the instability of the financial markets are now resurfacing. BCA Research, a Canadian investment research organisation, predicts volatility in the US stock market going forward. According to Fox Business, in a note to clients last week, BCA Research chief global strategist Peter Berezin warned that, contrary to popular belief, the economy will fall into a recession either this year or in early 2025. Should that happen, the S&P 500 could tumble to 3,750, which marks a 30% drop from current levels. Berezin's prediction hinges on the belief that the labour market will slow notably in the coming months, which will weigh heavily on consumer spending, a major driver of economic growth. The relationship between inflation and unemployment is measured by something called the "Phillips curve." "The reason the U.S. avoided a recession in 2022 and 2023 was because the economy was operating along the steep side of the Phillips curve," he wrote. "When the labour supply curve is nearly vertical, weaker labour demand will mainly lead to lower wage growth and falling job openings. In other words, an immaculate disinflation." Berezin also predicts broad economic challenges, including notable slowdowns in growth in China and Europe. This could contribute to the weakening of the global economy and increase pressure on international stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through 40,000 for the first time in mid-May, setting a new record high. It has now dropped from those peaks, though. This prediction, which might rank among the most pessimistic on Wall Street, comes after a turbulent year for the market.

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - U.S. small-business confidence slipped to the lowest level in more than 11 years in March amid rising concerns about inflation, according to a survey on Tuesday. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.9 point to 88.5 last month, the lowest level since December 2012. It was the 27th straight month the index was below the 50-year average of 98. Twenty-five percent of owners reported inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business, reflecting higher input and labor costs, up 2 points from February. The share of businesses raising average selling prices rose 7 points from the prior month. That aligns with a pick-up in consumer prices in the first two months of the year. Price increases were prevalent in the finance, retail, construction, wholesale and transportation sectors. There was also an increase in the share of businesses raising compensation even as demand for labor is cooling. The NFIB reported last week that  among small businesses in March were the weakest since May 2020. Item 1 of 3 the signs in a storefront window read "Going Out of Business" in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., March 7, 2024. [1/3]The signs in a storefront window read "Going Out of Business" in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., March 7, 2024. Nonetheless, small businesses in the transportation, construction and services industries are experiencing an acute shortage of workers, both skilled and unskilled. The government reported last week that the  303,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.8% from 3.9% in February.

After a disappointing March inflation report, the survey, which polled over 2,000 small business owners in the U.S. from April 8-12, 2024, finds that optimism over inflation has dropped among small business owners, falling back to the early 2023 levels. One in four (24%) small business owners say inflation has reached a peak, down from 29% the previous quarter, but most small business owners (75%) expect inflation to continue to rise, up from 69% the previous quarter. More than one in three (37%) of small business owners view inflation as the biggest threat to their business, nearly three times higher than other issues, such as consumer demand and labor shortages. The survey also highlights that three in five small business owners cite inflation (63%) and economic growth (61%) as the top issues for deciding on who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. However, there is a notable divergence between business owners under 35 and older business owners regarding social issues and foreign policy. More than half (56%) of business owners under 35 cite social issues as a major concern, which is second only to inflation and interest rates, while only 36% of them say foreign policy is a top issue.  Most small businesses also have little confidence in today’s business policies, with nearly three in four (73%) saying that today’s policies favor large companies over small businesses. Both Democratic and Republican small business owners find rare common ground with a majority of Republican (79%) and Democratic (71%) small business owners sharing that same view.   Despite declining confidence in overcoming inflation, small business owners still remain hopeful about the state of the economy, with 27% saying that the economy is “excellent or good,” similar to last quarter, but higher than the same time last year. Overall, the Small Business Confidence Index, a number based on responses to eight questions in the survey, has remained steady with a score of 47 out of 100, the same from last quarter’s survey and still the highest reading since Q4 2020.  “Small business owners are the engine of our economy, and the data shows they are still pessimistic about overcoming inflation,” said Lara Belonogoff, Senior Director of Brand Management and Research at SurveyMonkey. “With an election looming, it’s important to keep a close pulse on how this population thinks and feels about their prospects for economic growth.” 

Confidence in the Federal Reserve and President Biden:

Waiting to take off can be one of the most frustrating aspects of air travel. Sitting on the tarmac as you slowly inch forward in a queue of planes can be compared to the tension CEOs feel waiting for the next growth cycle to take off. The Q4 Vistage CEO Confidence Index rose 6 points to reach 82.0 — the fifth time in six quarters — and while optimism is improving, the historical lows of economic confidence show that takeoff is still delayed. Despite healthy GDP in 2023, CEOs’ concerns regarding the current and future economy stay within ranges not seen since the waning days of the Great Recession in 2008. Compared to Q4 2022, both expectations for the next 12 months and a review of last year are well above the lows hit in Q2 2022, yet still well below the norm established during the rising economic tide of the 2010s. CEOs are challenged to manage growth through the slow period forecasted in 2024. As Brian Burns, Co-Founder of Cutting Edge Countertops shared in the survey, one of his biggest challenges is “managing through a changing economy. As markets soften, marketing and sales must change gears and have the mindset of gaining market share. It’s more important than ever for the operations side of the business to execute and help win business.”

Almost half of all business owners expect interest rates to increase in the next six months, highlighting mounting economic concerns, according to a recent survey from Nationwide of 800 U.S. business owners. The majority of small business owners (72%) and mid-market business owners (51%) rate the current condition of the U.S. economy overall as 'poor' or 'fair,' with inflation topping their list of concerns at 61%. Following closely behind are worries about the upcoming U.S. presidential election (49%), high interest rates (49%), and supply chain disruptions (40%). Despite these and other economic uncertainties, many U.S. small and middle market business owners have a brighter perspective when considering their own businesses, with 51% of small business owners and 73% of middle-market business owners rating the economic environment for their own business as 'good' or 'excellent.' Employees placing demands on businesses amid economic challenges In addition to macroeconomic concerns, business owners face pressure from workers who are experiencing economic strains and demanding more from their employers. In the last six months, business owners have experienced employees: Asking for better compensation (37% - all owners; small - 34%; mid-market - 39%) Asking for more or better benefits (32% - all owners; small - 25%; mid-market - 40%) Leaving for better paying jobs (28% - all owners; small – 22%; mid-market – 35%) “Business owners have a lot to navigate right now, from macroeconomic anxieties to increasing demands from employees as they manage many of the same challenges. What’s clear is owners aren’t taking it on the chin; rather, they’re rolling up their sleeves to improve the operational strengths of their firms,” said Russ Johnston, president of Business Insurance at Nationwide. “As part of that process, business owners should consult with industry-specific insurance partners to assure their commercial policies and risk mitigation strategies are keeping up with their needs now and in the future.”

 U.S. small-business confidence slipped to the lowest level in more than 11 years in March amid rising concerns about inflation, according to a survey on Tuesday.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.9 point to 88.5 last month, the lowest level since December 2012. It was the 27th straight month the index was below the 50-year average of 98.