Here's what the owner of a small business really earns - Fortune
In this excerpt from his first book, Boss Life: Surviving My Own Business , he chronicles a year in the life of a real small business, with a real boss, a real set of employees, and the real challenges they all face. The amount varies depending on the exact number of hours worked, but it has been averaging $36,000. This covers hourly wage, pension contribution, and payroll taxes for fifteen people, including me. It doesn’t include the cost of health insurance,... Add them up and the cost to employ all those people for one hour is $317. (That number excludes my own salary. ) That’s before payroll taxes, workmen’s comp insurance, and unemployment insurance, which vary in complicated ways but add another 18 percent or so to the cost. I can’t simply have everyone work fewer hours—not at this point. I cannot ask people to work more hours without pay. In the fall of 2008, I cut my workers’ pay by 15 percent, and it was not popular. I got away with it because it was obvious to everyone that we were in serious trouble, and they had no place better to go. In 2012, the woodworking economy is still rocky, but it’s a lot better than it was. If I cut everyone’s pay again, some of them. Source: fortune.com
