When it comes to the economy, consumers and business owners have very different takes right now. Consumers are feeling positive, but the mood among businesses is at recession levels.
In a word, business owners are bummed.
"What we've found is that a lot of that optimism is not there right now," says Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for Gallup, which polled these small business types just after the election.
A third of businesses surveyed said they plan to cut back on spending in the next year. One in five say they'll be reducing staff. That's the highest percentage of business owners planning layoffs since the survey started a decade ago.
Jacobe says a big reason is the fiscal cliff — those automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that will take effect starting next month if Congress doesn't act to change it.
"Small business owners face some of the things that are in the fiscal cliff right now — in terms of as they set up their payroll for next year," Jacobe says. "There are a bunch of things that business owners have to think about as we're so close to the new year that the fiscal cliff brings home to them."
Take Ray Gaster, president of a lumber company in Savannah, Ga., where the housing market is rebounding. Gaster had planned to hire three more workers to his staff of 31.
"Right now, we put some hiring decisions on hold because of the uncertainty up in Washington, D.C., and we're not sure what kind of effect that's going to have on housing and the general economy," Gaster says.