Small Business Stats — Employment Edition

March 18, 2015

By Bob Coleman
Editor, Small Business Stats

Did you know 56 million employees are employed by 5.7 million small businesses?

• Almost all firms with employees are small. They make up 99.7 percent of all employers nationally.

• Firms with fewer than 100 employees have the largest share of small business employment.

• Nationally, small businesses created 2,175,253 net new jobs in 2012. The biggest gain was in the smallest firm size category of 1-4 employees.

• The number of people who were primarily self-employed in 2013 decreased by 1.2 percent relative to the previous year.

• The nation’s private-sector employment increased by 2.3 percent over the 12-month period ending in October 2014. This was above the annual average growth rate of 2.1 percent for the previous year.

Source: SBA Office of Advocacy’s The Small Business Advocate, February 2015