Report: Small businesses account for nearly half of state’s jobs

by MBJ Staff

Published: January 30,2012

Tags: employees, employers, federal government, jobs, report, small businesses, workers

ACROSS MISSISSIPPI — The Office of Advocacy has released the annual Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories. This is the 16th year Advocacy has published a state-by-state profile of American small business for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.

The Mississippi profile uses the most recent data available to provide details about the state’s small business employment, business starts and closings, bank lending, business ownership by minorities, women, and veterans and firm and employment change by major industry and firm size.

Here are some highlights from Mississippi’s small business profile:

• There were 229,518 small businesses in Mississippi in 2009. Of these, 44,518 were employers and they accounted for 49.4 percent of private sector jobs in the state. Small firms made up 96.5 percent of the state’s employers.

• Throughout 2010, the number of opening establishments was lower than closing establishments but the net employment change from this turnover was positive.

• Mississippi’s real gross state product decreased 0.4 percent and private-sector employment decreased 0.7 percent in 2010. By comparison, real GDP in the United States decreased 1.3 percent and private sector employment declined by 0.8 percent.

• Self-employment in Mississippi declined over the last decade. Minority self-employment fared the best compared with other demographic groups during the decade.

State profiles from previous years are available at archive.sba.gov/advo/research/profiles/; these provide a historical perspective of each state economy.

For more information and a complete copy of the current state and territory small business profiles, visit www.sba.gov/advocacy/848/41391/.

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