16 Surprising Statistics About Small Businesses

At Docstoc we’re obsessed with making every small business better, including folks like Jennifer Beall who started CleanBeeBaby.  She’s one of the millions running a small business, each of who struggle to thrive or survive.  In the last 6 years, we’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge about the state of small business from our 38 million members and we never cease to be surprised.  Here are 16 vital (and surprising) statistics we’ve uncovered about the small business landscape:

1)   The SBA defines a small business as an enterprise having fewer than 500 employees

2)   There are almost 28 million small businesses in the US and over 22 million are self employed with no additional payroll or employees (these are called nonemployers)

3)  Over 50% of the working population (120 million individuals) works in a small business

4)   Small businesses have generated over 65% of the net new jobs since 1995

5)   Approximately 543,000 new businesses get started each month (but more employer businesses shut down than start up each month)

6)   7 out of 10 new employer firms survive at least 2 years, half at least 5 years, a third at least 10 years and a quarter stay in business 15 years or more

7)  52% of all small businesses are home-based

8)   There were 22.5 million nonemployer firms in 2011 (up almost 2% from the year before)

9)   To classify as a “nonemployer” business you must have annualbusiness receipts of $1,000 or more and be subject to federal income taxes

10)   Approximately 75% of all U.S. businesses are nonemployerbusinesses

11)   19.4 million nonemployer businesses are sole proprietorships, 1.6 million are partnerships and 1.4 million are corporations

12)   The fastest growing sector for freelance businesses in 2011 includedauto repair shops, beauty salons and dry cleaners

13)   Total revenues from nonemployers hit $989.6 billion in 2011 (up 4.1% from 2010)

14)   Nonemployers had average revenues of $44,000

15)    Around 80% of nonemployer businesses for 2011 (or 18 million businesses) reported less than $50,000 in receipts

16)   Here is the revenue breakdown of nonemployer businesses in 2011:

Revenue / year	Percent	Establishments
$989.6 Billion	100%	22,491,080
Less than $5K	24.4%	5,492,587
$5K- 10K	16.9%	3,795,785
$10K – $25K	25.3%	5,689,588
$25K – $50K	13.5%	3,029,809
$50K – 100K	9.6%	2,151,075
$100K – $250K	7.2%	1,609,507
$250K – 500K	2.2%	484,479
$500K – $1M	0.9%	209,415
$1M – 2.5M	0.1%	26,744
$2.5M – $5M	0.0%	1,723
$5M or more	0.0%	368

Sources:

United States Census Bureau. “2011 Nonemployer Statistics.” U.S. Department of Commerce: http://censtats.census.gov/cgi-bin/nonemployer/nonsect.pl

Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy:http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf

United States Census Bureau: Statistics about Business Size (including Small Business) http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html

United States Census Bureau: Statistics of U.S. Businesses:http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/

How many Chileans?

CHILE’S reputation as a place where official statistics can be trusted has taken a bit of a battering of late. Last year the reliability of the country’s poverty survey, the CASEN, was called into doubt. Now it’s the turn of the census and inflation figures.

The 2012 census concluded that the population of Chile was 16,634,603. The National Statistics Institute (INE) said it knew this with some certainty because it had surveyed almost all of them, visiting 98.3% of households over four months. The government hailed the census as the most thorough in Chile’s history.

But on April 26th, a senior INE advisor, Mariana Alcérreca, said that the number of people surveyed was only 15.8m, or 95% of the population. She said the institute’s director Francisco Labbé massaged the figure upwards to 16.6m to make they census look more comprehensive. She also claimed that there were other irregularities in the way the census was conducted. Within hours, Mr Labbé—who says the accusations against him are politically motivated "lies"—had resigned.

The INE’s inflation data has also been questioned. Statisticians advised Mr Labbé to change the way it was calculated, but he refused. On April 17th the heads of 11 INE departments sent him a letter expressing their unease about both the census and the price data.

Bci, a Chilean bank, warned its clients that Chile’s inflation figures were less reliable than those of Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. The bank said inflation was probably around 2.5% last year—not the 1.5% of official lore. Morgan Stanley has also questioned the data.

The implications are enormous. Chile’s central bank has held its benchmark interest-rate steady at 5% for the past 15 months. Would it have done so if inflation were a percentage point higher? Many Chileans have inflation-linked investments. They may feel their money should have been earning more for them than it has.

State prosecutors have opened an investigation into Mrs Alcérreca’s claims. The government has dismissed calls for a new census and points out that a bill is already before Congress to reform the INE. It swiftly replaced Mr Labbé with a respected economist, Juan Eduardo Coeymans.

He has a job on his hands. The INE’s credibility is badly tarnished. Chile is the only South American member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think-tank of mainly rich countries. It sorely needs a statistics institute worthy of that membership, and at the moment it doesn’t have one.