Small-business hiring grew in February, but earnings growth slowed, says Paychex

The pace of small-business job growth accelerated for the third month in a row in February, according to payroll giant Paychex, but the rate of hourly earnings growth slipped. The Paychex | IHS Markit Small Business Employment, released Tuesday, showed a 0.15 percent increase in employment growth in February, and 0.22 percent in the past quarter, though it was down 0.61 percent from last year. Hourly earnings growth dipped to 2.74 percent in February. Weekly hours worked also fell for the second consecutive month but was up 0.41 percent compared to a year ago. However, the figures mostly don’t take into account the impact of the coronavirus on hiring. “Our cutoff was around Feb. 19 or 20,” said Frank Fiorille, vice president of risk management, compliance and data analytics at Paychex. “We’re not seeing it yet in the results. In our business we’ve not seen any impact yet, but we’re monitoring it very carefully and doing a lot of things for our clients and their employees.”