Posted on 07/20/2012 7:20:04 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
I like small businesses. I like medium-size and large ones too. I like em all, and while size matters small firms face different, and often more challenging, hurdles than large ones I fear we risk systemic distortions if our policies are too dependent on firm size.
But arent small firms the job creators? As Ive stressed before, not especially, despite the fact that you hear this mantra hourly from policymakers of both parties. Some new data on private sector employment by firm size from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is especially revealing.
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The first figure, from the BLS link above, just shows the time series in jobs by firm size, with the three size classes in the new series as 1-49, 50-499 and 500+: so small, medium and large. Over the full period the average shares for each dont change much: 29% of jobs are at small firms, 27% at medium, and 45% at large. Theres been a small shift a few percentage points from medium to large since 1990, but the small shares have been roughly constant at 28-29%.
So, the question is, do any of these size classes contribute disproportionately to job growth? In fact, they do, and the winner is not small firms. Whether in business-cycle expansions or the full run of these data, large firms 500+ employees contribute disproportionately to job growth. The small firms fewer than 50 workers in fact, contribute proportionately less than their share.
That may surprise you if youre used to hearing the opposite, which you hear a lot. Theres a reason for the different findings: establishments versus firms.
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(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Salon gibberish.
Fascists prefer few, very large corporations that are easily and willingly controllable over many small scattered and uncontrollable businesses.
The large businesses willingly cooperate because of the carrot (regulation that keeps out competition) and stick (we’ll punish you if you don’t cooperate).
i think this could be construed as an "economic hate message".
Bull manure.
These guys first three sentences all begin with the word I. The world revolves around the progresso.
spun off from a mega Corp. Sheesh. /s
SO TRUE!
vaudine
Hmmm, let’s see.....HEWLETT-PACKARD STARTED IN A GARAGE, SO DID APPLE. Microsoft once had 10 employees. Albertsons was once a grocery store run by two brothers.
Point is, every LARGE corporation STARTED OUT as a SMALL corporation, because somebody took a risk..........
Liberals don not understand this because they are, by definition, risk averse. They want to take all risk away in every sector of life. Nature doesn’t work that way, and neither does business...........
Easiest way to own a small business in today’s economy... buy a big one and wait.
There is even a book on the subject explaining just how to do it. I have a copy from the 50's that is just as true today as when it was first printed. Very informative. You could even call it the Liar's Bible...........
Wanna buy some old GM stock?...........
What are those figures like if you eliminate the 1 person companies? If I own some apartment buildings and form a corporation (or even one corporation per building) to limit my legal liability, I am unlikely to hire a second person.
If I ran a small business, I would pay close attention to how many employees I had. Certain employee levels can trigger some expensive compliance issues, and add on additional HR regulations.
It’s much easier to exercise political control over a few very large businesses than it is to control thousands and thousands of Mom’n’Pops.
He just arbitrarily created a new “medium” classification to bleed numbers away from small businesses. Most have traditionally lumped what he calls “medium” in the “small” class and used two classifications: Large and small businesses.
The numbers and definition games
That is the name of the game today. They changed the way fat and obesity are counted by lowering the threshhold. They have revised the way they count mentally challenged people and suddenly we have an epidemic. I hate when they do this and I hate it more than people buy into it...
SO, Big Government / Big Business is Good
Small employers are unimportant
The same regulations are forced on both
Makes it near impossible anymore for the small guys to start a business, to grow it or to compete
I don’t like concentration of power, period, whether it’s in government or business.
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=2087
Using Business Employment Dynamics (BED) dataset from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a table which demonstrates average gross and net job gains at all private business establishments from the third quarter of 1992 through the first quarter of 2010.5 Over this roughly 18-year period, gross job gains per quarter averaged a little less than 2.8 million, or about 929,000 per month. Since the 2007-2009 recession was extremely severe, the table includes a separate column that excludes the data from that period.
/*snip*/...businesses with fewer than 20 employees provided the largest percentage of gross job gains (about 30 percent). Businesses with between 20 and 99 employees accounted for the next largest share (about 27 percent), with the largest firms (500 or more) accounting for a somewhat smaller percentage (about 26 percent). The remaining categorybusinesses with between 100 and 499 employeesaccounted for a smaller percentage of gross job gains. All of these percentages are little-changed if we exclude the recession period.
The analysis in the table seems consistent with the conventional wisdom that small businesses are the largest source of job creation in the economy. However, as suggested by previous studies, the conclusion tends to change when the focus switches to net job creation.
/*snip*/Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the BED data show that since 1992, net job creation tended to be largest among the largest firms: These firms accounted for about 38 percent of the total. The smallest firms showed the smallest percentage of net jobs created. This result does not change if the past recession is excluded from the sample.
In short, small businesses showed higher rates of gross job creation, but they also exhibited high rates of job destruction. Looked at from this standpoint, net job creation matters most. END OF ARTICLE QUOTATION
It all depends on how you want to interpret the data; and, of course, there is always the confusion of business size, especially when considering franchises. I think the real importance of small business is that it can be a vehicle for wealth creation (or destruction) and thereby has served as the incubator for America's upper middle class...therefore despised by the Regime.
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