It’s All about Jobs

Starbucks is flexing its big company muscle to help small business. Beginning this month they have launched a campaign in their stores to raise money to help create jobs in this country. The coffee company has teamed up with Opportunity Finance Network for The Create Jobs for USA program and seeded it with a $5 million contribution from the Starbucks Foundation.

They further claim that every $5.00 donation from their customers “can provide $30.00 of additional financing to support community business.”

Contributors also get a bracelet so they can wear their support on their sleeve, so to speak.

It is pretty much an accepted fact that small businesses are biggest generators of job growth in this country and as such they could be the key to reducing the stubbornly high unemployment rate. According to this story by Carol Roth in The Huffington Post:

• If one out of every two small businesses (50%) hired just ONE person, we would have zero unemployment;

• If each of the 6 million small businesses that has employees hired just two people, we would only have 2 million people unemployed in the US (1.3% unemployment);

• In contrast, business with more than 500 employees would need to hire an average of 655 people each to get to hire the same 12 million employees (i.e., to achieve 2 million people unemployed).

So I pitched in my five bucks today. I’m not sure if this will work but it seems like a small price to pay to give it a try.