In 2021 Boise State Economics professors with the help of Idaho SBDC data admin Michael Byrd set out to assess the total economic impact of the Idaho Small Business Development Center. The study showed a staggering 773.8 million dollars of economic impact. The Idaho SBDC offers no-cost consulting to businesses across Idaho, fostering business success. The study uses client-reported Statewide Impact for the year 2020 to analyze the direct, indirect, and induced economic benefits that result from the Idaho SBDC’s consulting. The regional impact corresponds to the map to the right.
Direct Impact
The Idaho SBDC surveyed clients to uncover the direct impact of the Idaho SBDC on Idaho’s economy. Below is a table aggregating the Idaho SBDC’s client-attributed impact, and beside the table are their definitions.
The data is collected with a survey by the Idaho SBDC and defined as follows:
- Started Businesses measures the number of businesses that each center helped start in 2020.
- Jobs Created measures the number of jobs created thanks to ISBDC intervention.
- Jobs Retained is an estimate of the jobs that would have otherwise been lost, had the centers not
intervened. This number is provided by the businesses. - Capital Raised measures the amount of new capital raised by the businesses as a result of the
intervention of the local ISBDC office. - Annual Sales shows the annual sales reported by each business for the year 2020.
- Sales Increase shows the sales increase by businesses who have benefitted from ISBDC intervention from the previous year. For this value, it assumed that the increase is due to the intervention, although some of that might have happened anyway.
Indirect and Induced Impact
Indirect and induced impact is an impact that is created as a result of more money in the economy. These additional dollars are represented by multipliers that have been deduced and agreed upon by economists across the United States. For example, A multiplier of 1.8 indicates that an initial dollar spent results in an additional $0.80 in economic output and an initial job created results in another 0.8 new jobs in the region.
In Conclusion, the Idaho Small Business Development Centers were able to create and retain 5,412 jobs and were responsible for an increase of $238.6 million in labor income, $373.7 million in value-added, $773.8 million in total output for the state, and generated $76.5 million in tax revenues.
