27 percent of Small UK Businesses Plan to Create Jobs over the next Twelve Months

27 percent of Small UK Businesses Plan to Create Jobs over the next Twelve Months

Research from Simply Business the UK’s largest business insurance broker, indicates that 27 percent of small businesses could be planning to increase their employee numbers over the next 12 months.

There are 1, 178,745* small businesses in the UK with at least one employee. If 27 percent of these businesses create just one job this would equate to 318,261 new jobs in the UK. The potential impact of these newly created jobs would see unemployment figures fall from their current 17 year high of 2.62 million** to a little over to 2.3 million.

Currently around 60 percent of unemployed people claim Job Seekers Allowance**. The creation of these jobs could result in 198,139 fewer people claiming Job Seekers Allowance and equate to minimum weekly government saving of more than £10.5 million***.

Simply Business, commissioned the UK SME Trends survey to build a picture of the predictions for 2012 from the small business owner’s perspective. The research covered topics including marketing spend, projected revenue, funding sources, headcount changes, sales and finance plus other priorities and predictions for the next 12 months. 374 UK SME business owners and decision makers took part in the survey in October 2011.

Jason Stockwood CEO of Simply Business said:

“The optimistic picture these SMEs paint is heartening in these tough times. When you consider that SMEs account for 99.9 per cent* of the total enterprises in the UK and provide over 59 per cent* of the jobs in the private sector their continued success and growth is key to our economic recovery.”