National Employment Trends

The NY based Conference Board's Employment Index showed a slight improvement for May. The Index increased to 89.9 from 89.7 in April for a 0.2% increase. This increase indicates that the pace of unemployment growth is slowing, but not reversing yet. Economists still predict that unemployment will increase above 10% either by year end 2009 or 2010.

Like many other indicators, this suggests that the economy is improving, but slowly. Companies must continue a constant eye on cost reduction and operating efficiencies. A 10% unemployment rate will continue to result in low consumer purchasing power, so revenues will continue to wane on average.

SBA 100% Guarantees

The SBA has announced a new guarantee program designed to support small businesses that are struggling with the current economic situation. That is, a guarantee program offering Zero SBA fees, 100% guarantee, with deferred payments up to $35,000. The program is being called the America's Recovery Capital (ARC) loans, and is part of the Recovery Act.

www.SBA.gov

Housing New Construction Falls

From the Washington Post this morning, permits for new housing has fallen to a record low for April. This news is a mixed bag however, as single family home construction rose 2.8%. The decline was pushed by multifamily construction, which declined by 46%. This decline included the Northeast, South and Midwest, though the Washington DC Metro region may be an outlier in this data.

Washington Post

August 30th Network Meeting Agenda

The next Venture Network meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 30th at Giuseppe's in Frostburg again. As we don't have a volunteer business this month, I thought the arrangements at Giuseppe's worked out well, hence we'll go back.

The agenda is:
5PM - 6PM; informal meet and greet
6PM - 7PM; meeting discussions over appetizers supplied by me
7PM - ; dinner (buy your own) for anyone that wishes to stay and continue the discussions.

For those of you that have not yet attended, I think the now-regulars will testify to a couple of things:

1. The discussions have been interesting and helpful
2. Though this is being organized by me, you don't have to worry that I'll be pitching my consulting services - I haven't yet and don't plan to.

If you plan on attending the meeting this month, please let me know as soon as is feasible. I'll send out another reminder later this month as well.

Regional Needs

Again, as part of our overall discussion last evening, I'm creating this post as a place for you to comment on what you think your company / the region needs to better support growing companies. Don't be shy.

Thanks - Ted

Regional Resources

As part of our group discussion last evening, we identified a need to share information regarding regional resources that stand to be used by our various companies. Legal firms, accountants, or a good web development company :), are good examples of the types of resources that we'd like to share. These can be local, but could also be contacts that extend beyond our region.

Please post contact information for any resources that you'd like to share here. Thanks to all.

Meeting Recap and Next Meeting Information

For those of you who missed our recent meeting on the 28th, we had a series of great discussions about ourselves, our businesses and doing business in our region. I had originally thought that we'd have one hour to go over these topics, but instead found that we needed 2 1/2 hours to get through everything that needed to be said. The level of discussion from our first meeting, leads me to believe that the network itself is badly needed.

As such, our second meeting will be held on July 26th at the offices of Spectrum Bioscience, Inc. in the Garrett Industrial Park near Grantsville. We'll tour the Spectrum facility, then move to Penn Alps to continue the discusions and have dinner, etc.

I'll pass along more information, including directions to Spectrum's facility, as the date moves closer.

Ted