Small businesses hiring is essential to America’s economic recovery, but small companies will not hire in a vacuum. They base staffing decisions on a number of factors, some of them hyper-local, like business demand or ability to make payroll, but other reasons not to hire come straight from Washington.

In a recent Gallup poll of 600 small business owners, a troubling 85% indicated they were not planning to hire. Nearly half cited potential health care costs (48%) and government regulations (46%) as reasons they were not looking for new employees.

Dennis Jacobs, chief economist with Gallup, noted that while some of the results were expected, others were more uncommon:

Companies typically hold back on hiring when the economy is weak and when their operating environment is not providing sufficient revenues or cash flows. This appears to be the case right now, as the economy has been weak for more than four years. Less typical is for many owners to point to such things as potential healthcare costs and government regulations.

The findings of the Gallup poll are similar to the Chamber’s Small Business Outlook Survey. The quarterly survey, released in January, revealed that of the 1,332 small business owners surveyed, two-thirds said they had no plans to hire in 2012.

While the data cannot be directly compared, similar concerns of small business owners echo through both the Chamber and the Gallup polls. Seventy-four percent of respondents in the Chamber survey indicated that the 2010 health care law specifically makes it harder to hire, and 78% said taxation, regulation, and legislation from Washington hindered hiring.