More than one million small business jobs will be created during 2000 and 2001, thanks to continued growth of e-commerce, Ken Perez, CyberCash's senior vice president of marketing, told a U.S. Senate forum in June.
Speaking at a forum entitled, "e-Commerce: Barriers and Opportunities for Small Business," organized by the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business, Perez explained that his analysis of existing Small Business Administration data, and data from other independent sources, indicate that strong e-commerce growth will have a significant impact on U.S. companies with less than 100 employees.
"When we think of the companies doing business on the Internet, we naturally think of the giants such as American Online, Amazon.com, and Yahoo with sizable workforces and soaring stock prices. But the fact is, small business also will benefit from the boom in e-commerce," Perez predicts. "If it's true that a rising tide lifts all boats, we can expect many small businesses on the Internet to take off more like a Polaris missile."
As staggering as the one million figure may seem, Perez believes it is conservative. "For purposes of this analysis, we did not factor in any benefit to the more than 13 million businesses that make up the so-called ëSOHO', or small office/home office segment of the economy, even though this segment is considered part of the total small business portion of the U.S. economy. We also chose not to apply any ëmultiplier' effects associated with revenue increases. If you take all of this into account, it may very well turn out that the level of job creation will be much greater than anticipated," Perez stated.
