Are Small Business Jobs ‘Good’ Jobs?

By Rowena Barrett

Small business is high on the Australian public policy agenda and more so now that small business employment growth is trending downwards.

Recent recommendations to increase small business employment highlight the importance of not only the quantity of small business jobs but also the quality of those jobs.

An overwhelming number of Australian businesses are small, that is they employ less than 20 people. Small businesses dominate all private sector industries and, most importantly, they play a significant role in rural and regional economies and communities.. This paper takes the claim 'if all small businesses put on one extra person there would not be an unemployment problem' and examines the issue of small business employment generation, the attributes of small business employment and the factors influencing small business owner/operators decision to hire. In the paper small business jobs in the Latrobe Valley, a less favoured, non-metropolitan region in Victoria, Australia, are used to illustrate the arguments and findings about small business jobs more generally. The paper makes a number of suggestions for small business employment policy, in particular that policy attention should be focussed on ensuring small business employers understand the intrinsic and extrinsic value of 'good jobs', not only for their business but for the economy as a whole.

A paper presented at the 48th World Conference of the International Council of Small Business, June 2003, Belfast.

Family and Small Business Research Unit Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University