National Small Business Trends
Year-to-date, small businesses have increased employee headcount by 0.3%. The national SurePayroll Hiring Index, which measures the number of employees within small businesses, ended October at 10,470, a 10-point decrease from September. We closed 2004 at 10,435.
The decrease in hiring we saw in October was noteworthy because, prior to October, small business owners had only had two "down" months for hiring in the past eighteen months prior to last month. It appears that the hurricanes and other negative economic factors finally have slowed down an otherwise very resilient small business economy.
On an annualized basis, we are tracking on a 0.4% increase in small business size. That's significantly less than the 4.4% growth we experienced in 2004.
Small business paychecks were up in October, for the second month in a row. The SurePayroll Pay Index clocked in at 937 at the end of October, a 5-point increase from September.
Small business salaries are now down 1.6% year to date. October's 1.6% year-to-date drop translates to an annualized decline of 1.9%.
In 2004, small business salaries dropped 4.8% on average. Based on October's data, we will have a smaller salary drop in 2005 than we had in 2004.
The monthly SurePayroll Scorecard data for October 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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2004
