Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Small Business:Lets Look At The Statistics

There are 2.7 million firms in the U.S( with 1-4 employees) who pay 5.8 million people.This  type of firm is the largest enterprise in America.The firms with 5-9 individuals are second on the list with 1.04 million while employing 6.8 million people. Firms with 100-499 have 86.5 thousand while employing 16.7 million.Firms with 500-2500 employees have the most people with 56.5 million.Firms with over 2500 employees are the second largest with 42.8 million people.These statistics,if I'm reading them correctly,tell me that the majority of the workforce are in firms between 500-10,000 or more. 98.3 million of a total workforce of  157.5 million in the U.S receive salaries from large businesses instead of small ones.(U.S. Census Bureau 2004) That's a rate of 62.4% employed by large(big) business.The Republicans lead one to believe small business creates all the jobs when the statistics before me tells a different story.It is true we have a large number of small businesses(up to 499 employees) but they only employ 37% of Americans working.

What is a small business? The Department of Administration Materials Management Division in Minnesota has a list of small business standards by millions of dollars in sales.Companies under a sales amount(revenue) can be listed as a small business and receive state contracts and tax benefits.The lowest revenue was a million dollars(industrial launderers,etc.) to the largest with 75 million(commercial and institutional building construction).Most of the companies were around 25 million. These businesses seem rather big to me but compared to the large firms that I mentioned above their revenues must be a lot smaller than the large firms employing over 500 people.

Last March,NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapole published a report on the role small business has in NYS economy.His statistics claim that 51.7% of all NYS jobs are in small businesses(national statistics show37%) and 19.4% are in firms with less than 20 employees.There are 312,000 of 519,000 firms in NYS with less than four employees.Most of these statistics are similar to the national census numbers I gave in the first paragraph(Each state is a little different).Most employees work for large firms in NYS. The top twenty employers in NYS are very large firms.See chart

Full-time equivalent employees located in the state

Rank Company Name
NYS
Employment
1 NY Presbyterian Healthcare System 29,000
2 Walmart* 28,000
3 Citigroup 27,000
4 IBM Corp. 21,000
5 JP Morgan Chase 21,000
6 University of Rochester/Strong Health & affiliates 20,000
7 Verizon 18,000
8 Cornell University/Weill Medical 17,000
9 Federated Department Stores 17,000
10 Montefiore Medical Center 17,000
11 New York University/School of Medicine 16,000
12 Columbia University/Medical Center 15,000
13 Golub Corp Price Chopper 14,000
14 Wegmans Food Markets 13,000
15 Kaleida Health 11,000
16 Merrill Lynch 10,000
17 Eastman Kodak 7,000
18 Rochester General Health System 7,000
19 Xerox 7,000
20 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center 7,000    ( Center for Gov. Research)

All of these firms are large businesses with the majority of the jobs going to professionals with college and post college degrees except for Walmart, the chain food stores,department stores and possibly Verizon.NYS and the majority of the states in America lack quality jobs for citizens without a college degrees(75% of citizens have less than a four year college degree).Financial services have replaced manufacturing (40% to 19%) in the last twenty years leaving the high school graduates with little opportunity to make middle class wages.71% of American families(two wage earners) make under $50,000.The correlation between education and earnings is obvious. The increased cost of a college education has created additional income disparity between the classes in the U.S.The lower class is forgotten in the papers and airwaves of America.Lock them up(largest prison system in world),ship them out(Afghanistan) or ignore them as the middle and upper classes wait in line for the next French restaurant to open up down the block.

No comments:

Post a Comment