In whatever what we’re in now – recession, economic downturn, financial crisis. So the answer to the "how we doing" question is not uniform across the board. The sectors I see are our business owner clients and their employees who participate – or not – in their company’s retirement plan. And each has an entirely set of feelings as to where they are now.

I’ve written about both groups in my other blog home, Slate’s Small Business blog, a special promotion by Open from American Express.

Business Owners are generally optimistic as I noted in my column, An Optimistic Optimism Index. That’s the findings of the new Small Business Success Index launched just this month by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Employees on the other hand are understandably concerned about job security and losing health insurance coverage as I noted in my column, New Grim Report on Small-Business Employees. That’s the findings of the recently released Well-Being Index for the first quarter of 2009 by Principal Financial.

Picture above: Half Empty or Half Full by Jaxxon by way of Flickr.