Posts and replies

"On a firm-by-firm basis, small businesses score an easy win, according to beautifully detailed Census Bureau data — the invaluable Business Dynamics Statistics — built from government records drawn from just about every private sector employer in the country. About 60 percent of American businesses have fewer than five employees, and 98 percent have fewer than 100 employees.

But we’re not sure about the utility of a measure that counts Goldman Sachs and Tariq’s #1 Halal Food equally — even if we can all agree that Tariq makes the superior chicken biryani.

If we weigh America’s businesses instead by the number of their employees, we see the trend Texas Pete feared: Before the Great Recession, most Americans worked for businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Today, it’s reversed, with 53 percent of us working for businesses with 500 or more workers.

The rule applies across the economy — the smaller the business, the slower the growth. But the real drivers of this economy-wide shift sit at the extremes: Businesses with fewer than 100 employees have steadily lost ground while business with more than 10,000 employees have gained."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/31/is-america-still-nation-small-businesses/