National Small Business Trends
Year to date, small businesses have increased employee headcount by 0.03%, close enough to zero to call it a very flat year so far. The national SurePayroll Hiring Index, which measures the number of employees within small businesses, ended February at 10,438. We closed 2004 at 10,435. Hence, there's been little change in average small business size in the United States since the end of 2004.Small business paychecks were slightly down in February. The SurePayroll Pay Index clocked in at 946 at the end of January. It was at 952 at the end of December and was at 947 at the end of January. As such, small business salaries are now down 0.7% year to date. That's a considerably slower pace for small business salary deflation than we saw in 2004.
In 2004, small business salaries dropped 4.8% on average. The slowdown in salary deflation is good news for small business employees. It's arguably bad news for small business owners as they may be seeing an end to lower employee salaries.
The monthly SurePayroll Scorecard data for February 2005 can be found in the table below.
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About the Scorecard
The SurePayroll Hiring Index and the SurePayroll Pay Index are generated as part of SurePayroll’s Small Business Scorecard, an
economic indicator that tracks the health of the U.S. small business economy. The Small Business Scorecard is generated from
actual payroll data – paychecks issued to contractors and employees – for over 15,000 small businesses nationwide.
Questions regarding the SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard can be directed to Michael Alter. Michael can be reached at malter@surepayroll.com or by phone at (847) 676-8420 ext. 7229.
Small Business Scorecards Archive:
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2005 |
2004
