Small Biz in Massachusetts Makes Up For Big Biz
Firms with fewer than 500 employees added 20,000 new jobs
Massachusetts gained 12,600 jobs between 2003 and 2004, no thanks due to large companies.
According to this year's Small Business Profile from the U.S. Small Business Association, businesses in Massachusetts employing 500 or more people experienced a net loss of 7,900 jobs in that year (the last for which data is available). But small business picked up the slack, gaining 20,400 new jobs.
Small Is Big
According to the report, small companies - those with fewer than 500 workers - employed 49.7 percent of the state's private, non-farm work force, slightly less than the national average. But the statistics vary enormously from industry to industry.
Companies in the Bay State with fewer than 100 workers also employed more than half the work force in the real estate, rental and leasing, health care and social assistance and accommodation and food services sectors.
The vast majority of Massachusetts employers, like the vast majority of all U.S. employers, are small businesses.
The 2004 statistics show that 98 percent of the state's 146,330 employers had fewer than 500 workers, and 96 percent had fewer than 100. But those numbers pale in comparison to the number of companies that have no employees, which totaled 471,300 in 2005.
The ranks of the self-employed included 94,310 in professional, scientific and technical services, as well as 63,020 in construction and 52,800 in real estate, rental and leasing.
WBJ Web Partners
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