Employee Gifts? Ha!

Holiday-shopping forecasts give reason to believe people will get fewer gifts from their loved ones this year. If workers at small businesses expect their employer to take up the slack, an American Express Open survey will disabuse them of that fantasy. Forty-seven percent of the entrepreneurs surveyed said they will be giving gifts to customers, down modestly from the 52 percent saying the same last year. But there has been a sharper decline in the number saying they’ll give gifts to employees, from 46 percent last year to 35 percent this year.