In a new column at Forbes, I take look at the National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) update of its report called The Cost of Federal Regulation to the U.S. Economy, Manufacturing and Small Business.
Authored by Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain, the report, via both top-down and bottom-up estimates, finds that overall costs of regulatory compliance to the economy reached $3.079 trillion in 2022 (in 2023 dollars).
That $3 trillion amounts to $277,000 in average annual compliance costs for a typical US firm. The report notes also that per employee costs for the typical US firm is almost $13,000, and that regulations cost the typical US firm around 19% of payroll expenditures.
Small businesses tend to be hit hardest. That unfairness is most prominent in the manufacturing sector, where, for small firms with fewer than 50 employees, the average…
