Raymond Arth knows he should feel better about the economy. His company hasn’t returned to its pre-recession revenues selling its wares to the makers of RVs and manufactured homes, but it is making a profit again. Like too many other small-business proprietors, Arth doesn’t fully trust this economic recovery. While he says he’s "guardedly optimistic" about it, his actions are all about the first half of that phrase,
In the Labor Department’s latest snapshot of the country’s job market, the private sector added 268,000 jobs in April, the largest gain in five years and the third consecutive month of solid job growth. Yet a more sobering account of where the economy might be headed—and arguably a more accurate barometer of the near-term future—is the monthly report published by the National Federation of Independent Business. After all, it’s small businesses, which have created two out of every three new jobs the economy has added since the early 1990s, that historically have led the country out of recessions. And it’s the owners of small businesses that the NFIB surveys each month for its Small Business Optimism Index.
On that front the news is anything but good. The index is down for the second straight month. Fewer small-business owners expect conditions to improve over the next half year a drop of 18 percentage points from January. The bulk of new hiring must be happening inside larger corporations, since their smaller counterparts on Main Street say they are generally reluctant to create new jobs. That aptly sums up the sentiments of Scott Lipps, the president of the Sleep Tite Mattress Factory. Before the downturn, Lipps says, his sales were about evenly split between his medical clients (hospitals and nursing homes) and consumers buying mattresses through a factory outlet. But sales to the general public plummeted starting in 2008.
"The families affected most by the economy have stopped buying," Lipps says. "And those who say ’We have to have a new mattress’ are downgrading to a medium-quality mattress. " Despite a 20 percent drop in sales, Lipps and his partner tried to forestall the inevitable by putting up $ 70,000 of their own money. But in 2010 they laid off three of their 18 full-time employees. "It should have happened in 2009, but we let our hearts run the company instead of our billfolds," Lipps says.
In Bartlesville, Mat Saddoris is feeling relatively more upbeat. Saddoris is the third-generation owner of United Linen, a restaurant-supply company that cut its workforce by more than 10 percent during the downturn’s darkest days. Revenues are back up to pre-2008 levels, and United Linen is back to its pre-recession staffing of 135 employees. But will he take the risk of growing the company "I talk to my customers and they’re optimistic—to a point," he says. "They’ve all come back from the pits, if you will, and things have been getting better in the past six or seven months. " But, he says, "I don’t think they’re ready to announce that things have turned around. \
What Scott Lipps says explains（）
A. why small businesses are cautious in hiring people
B. why small businesses have not generated a profit
C. how the federal economic policies affect small businesses
D. how customers have changed their buying habits
参考答案：A
解析：
第三、四段都引用了Lipps的活，他是一家床垫工厂老板，他的床垫一半卖给医院和养老院，一半经工厂的销售店卖给消费者，但是后者自2008年以来锐减。受金融危机影响最深的人不再买床垫了，不得不买新床垫的人也捡便宜的买，为了防止不可避免的后果，他们自己掏腰包来支撑着企业。但撑到2010年之后，他们不得不解雇了三名工人。他说，他们本来应该早解雇人的，但是他们用心来经营公司，而不是靠钱夹来经营公司。他的意思是，他们公司不仅仅是为了赚钱，而更多的是以人为本。在提到Lipps的例子之前，第三段谈到小企业不愿意创造新的就业机会，不愿意雇人，因此举出Lipps的例子正是为了说明这一点。