[zamfi]

Can you give a more specific link to the bureau of labor statistics?

Assuming you're using the typical "500 employees" definition of small business, US census data doesn't seem to bear you out. For the period 1988 to 2003, see table 2c here: http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html

The percentage of paid employees employed by organizations with 500+ employees increased in the period 1988 to 2004, to 49.1% - as the total number of employees has increased by 30%.

Are we looking at different things?

[jbooth]

Everybody says it all the time. Maybe they're all wrong, but probably you are. I don't mean to be rude but I'm not writing a book report here and am not going to spend my morning looking for charts.

Consider that Google's now a very large employer but were a very small business 10 years ago. The way you view that and similar cases probably influences the outcome quite a bit. Small companies get big, they get bought out, or they fail. Either way they created jobs for a little bit, and all 3 of those cases wouldn't be captured by the single year snapshot of data you linked to (why 2002?).

[zamfi]

I'm now speculating, but I'd guess that a very small percentage of small businesses ever become big businesses, though it's almost surely true that all big businesses were at some point small businesses.

Your original argument seems to have been that the government should encourage innovative businesses, and I strongly agree with you there. I don't think business size is particularly relevant to that.

Success in business is highly complex. I'd guess that your assertion that small businesses get big, bought out, or fail is incorrect. Many small businesses remain small businesses for many years - think your corner dry cleaner or grocery.

The chart I pointed to looked at the years 1988-2004, not just 2002.

Of course, this post is no longer based in facts, just guesses. (If you're not interested in finding out the truth, I wont waste my time with real data any further.)

[duncanj]

I assume Google created more jobs in the rise from 501 to >20,000 employees than they did in the 2-500 period.

I have heard statistics that a lot of the creation of jobs occurs with small business. Also, that a lot of the job losses occur at small businesses. The net jobs created are reflected in the bls statistics that show increase in employment among different kinds of businesses.