BATON ROUGE – On Saturday, November 24, Louisiana will join a national movement in celebrating Small Business Saturday, to recognize the strength, value, and importance imparted by locally owned small businesses to their communities and the state.
Sandwiched between the holiday shopping trends of “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” the Small Business Saturday observation also follows Thanksgiving and gives Louisiana residents an appropriate time and place to give special thanks and patronage for the state’s small businesses.
According to the National Retail Federation, an estimated 154 million shoppers made consumer purchases during Thanksgiving weekend in 2016. Such retail activity supports the nearly 93,000 small business retail jobs in Louisiana. In particular, Small Business Saturday encourages shoppers to make a larger percentage of their purchases at those locally owned, independent business, thus helping those enterprises thrive in a competitive economy.
In Louisiana, small businesses make up over 97 percent of the state’s employers. More than 910,000 Louisiana residents are employed by small businesses, collectively accounting for 53 percent of all private-sector jobs in the state. In October 2017, Louisiana earned an A+ grade in Thumbtack’s report card on small business friendliness, ranking the state No. 4 in the U.S. – a testament to Louisiana’s commitment to support an economic climate in which small businesses can grow and thrive.
