SBA on Small Business Job Creation

The SBA recently updated their small business statistics recently. The update again highligths the importance of small business employment to the US economy. Small businesses (less than 500 employees) employ 50.9% of nations private non-farm workforce in 2004.

Net new job creation is even more slanted towards small business. From 2003 to 2004 companies with less than 20 employees created roughly 1.6 million net new jobs. Companies with 20 to 499 employees created around 275,000 net new jobs. Meanwhile, employment at companies with more than 500 employees shrank by 214,000.

The SBA is also reporting that over the last 20 years small businesses have created roughly 3 out of 4 net new private non-farm US jobs.