Data and Statistics on Small Businesses

Here are some interesting statistics on small and home-based businesses:

• Home-based businesses constitute 53% of all small businesses.
• 99.7% of firms that have employees are small businesses.
• Small businesses employ over half of the more than 145 million American workers.

Source: Testimony of The Honorable Thomas M. Sullivan, Chief Counsel for Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business on July 30, 2008 http://www.sba.gov/advo/laws/test08_0730.html

Some other great sources of statistical factoids on small businesses are:

• SBA Frequently Asked Questions http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf
• Small Business Lending in the US http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/lending.html
• National Small Business Association Survey of Small and Mid-Sized Businesses http://www.nsba.biz/docs/surveynewfinal.pdf
• Survey of Business Owners http://www.census.gov/csd/sbo/