Small business friendliness: Poor

South Florida cities get poor to hohum grades for “small business friendliness,” according to a new survey by Thumbtack, an app that matches customers with local service businesses and professionals.

Fort Lauderdale got a C+, West Palm Beach a D+, and Miami a B- in a Thumbtack survey released this week. The low grades are for issues in starting a business, licensing and regulations.

As a state, Florida didn’t do much better: C+ for small business friendliness, which was down from a B+ in 2017. Florida was ranked 29 in small business friendliness.

“As more businesses are trying to grow, they’re not able to do so as quickly and easily as they would like,” said Thumbtack’s lead economist, Lucas Puente. “Many of our respondents told us that it wasn’t easy to start a business in Florida — a key challenge for them was understanding and navigating government rules for registering a new business.”

Jacksonville was the only Florida city to earn an A+ rating, among six cities nationally.

In its seventh annual survey, San Francisco-based Thumbtack surveyed more than 7,500 small business owners in 50 states and 57 cities to evaluate how easy state and local governments make it to start, operate and grow a small business. The survey was conducted between June 4 and July 16.

Grades were based on factors including licensing requirements, tax regulations, and labor and hiring regulations.

Both Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach’s grades fell from B- in 2017. So what go worse? “Ease of starting a business” and “regulations” were deemed worse by small business owners in 2018.

Miami, which stayed level in its grade from last year’s survey, was ranked positively on “ease of hiring,” but “ease of starting a business” rated low.

So which states got an A+ in smallbusiness friendliness? South Dakota, Tennessee and Alaska.

Cities earning the top grade were: Fort Worth, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Columbus, Ohio.