Intuit Payroll’s Small Business Indexes show that U.S. small businesses created 30,000 jobs in November, a gain of just over 0.1%. For Texas, small business hiring gained just under 0.1%. The November numbers follow nearly half a year of job cuts at companies with fewer than 20 employees.

Intuit economist Susan Woodward says the sector best poised for a recovery in the near term is construction.

“Construction is still really in the ditch. Single-family starts are still around 700,000-800,000 a year. A normal year would be 1.8 million, and we are 2-3 million units behind trend.  The real recovery of the economy will come when construction recovers, and it won’t just be a recovery, it will be a bit of a construction boom.”

Woodward estimates that construction accounts for one in every five small businesses.