Feeling happy, sort of

Florida small business executives, in general, feel somewhat positive about the future economic environment, according to the latest Thumbtack.com/Bloomberg Small Business Sentiment Survey.

When compared against the sentiment from the surveys of other states, Florida ranks 13th nationwide. Most of the others that placed ahead of Florida are in the Southeast. Mississippi ranked first, South Carolina ranked third and Georgia ranked fourth. Tennessee is fifth, while the second-place state is Oklahoma.

The survey addressed more than a dozen topics, from outlook on profitability to ability to obtain loans to the difficulty of hiring people. Released June 30, the report is the inaugural version of the survey from Thumbtack, which connects freelancers with people in need of projects and services. “Many of these businesses have few or no employees, and are often overlooked in other widely tracked business surveys,” Thumbtack Chief Economist Jon Lieber says in a statement.

The report also contains statements from entrepreneurs statewide about the pulse of the economy. A house cleaner in Fort Myers, for example, says, “As I am in the arena of building and real estate maintenance, the current upward trend in construction and real estate sales and rentals should allow growth.”

Another entrepreneur, also from Fort Myers, has long-term worries: “Right now, we are doing better than four or five years ago,” says this respondent, “but the economy in Southwest Florida is fickle and very dependent upon travel.”