How Important is Small Business to the US Economy?

Small firms:

•    Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
•    Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
•    Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
•    Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
•    Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
•    Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
•    Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
•    Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in       FY 2007.
•    Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as            likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.

Gustavo A. Viera, CPA

CPA in Miami since 1983