Small businesses began hiring again for the first time since August while maintaining the same amount of holiday or year-end bonuses as one year ago, according to the SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard survey for November.

Hiring edged up 0.1 percent in November from October; however, hiring fell 0.6 percent compared to November 2013, according to the report.

The survey found 52 percent of small businesses are giving bonuses and 89 percent of those bonuses will be the same or better than a year ago. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said the general state of the economy and other macro-economic factors caused them to give less in bonus money.

“You might have expected small business owners to give less holiday or year-end bonuses because they’re bringing on more people, however they’ve been telling us profitability is up and that seems to have allowed them to maintain their bonuses,” said SurePayroll General Manager Andy Roe.

Only 38 percent of respondents said the general state of the economy and other macro-economic factors caused them to give less in bonus money, roughly the same as last year.

“That tells us while the economy hasn’t gotten tremendously better for small business owners, it at least hasn’t gotten any worse,” Roe said.

Small business owners’ level of optimism about the economy rose to 65 percent in November, after dropping to 62 percent in October; it reached 75 percent in May.

SurePayroll’s Scorecard compiles data from more than 40,000 small businesses and exclusively reflects the trends affecting businesses with one to 10 employees. The average business reflected has six employees. SurePayroll Inc. provides online payroll services to small businesses. It is a subsidiary of Paychex Inc. (NASD: PAYX).