SurePayroll Announces Top Ten States for Small Businesses in 2005

CHICAGO — February 4, 2005 — Today SurePayroll released its first annual "SurePayroll Top Ten States for Small Businesses" list, identifying the states in which small businesses have the best potential to do well.

Virginia, California, and Arizona took top honors in the SurePayroll Top Ten study, which is based on SurePayroll's monthly Small Business Scorecard.

"The states we ranked as the top 10 all did exceptionally well in terms of small business jobs growth in the trailing twelve months," said SurePayroll President Michael Alter. "Based on that performance, we believe they will continue to be strong states for small businesses throughout the rest of 2005."

The SurePayroll Top Ten
According to SurePayroll, the 10 states that will be best for small businesses in 2005, ranked by likely performance, are:

1. Virginia
2. California
3. Arizona
4. Georgia
5. North Carolina
6. Michigan
7. Nevada
8. Pennsylvania
9. New Jersey
10. Illinois

SurePayroll awarded these states its SurePayroll Top Ten designation because they have had strong growth in the past. For example, in the last twelve months small businesses in Virginia, California and Arizona led the nation by growing 8.7%, 8.2%, and 6.3% respectively.

The Small Business Employee's Perspective
Growth in employees is the basis for defining the SurePayroll Top Ten. The underlying presumption is that growth in size suggests that a small business in doing well.

However, five of the states in which small businesses grew the most (Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan and Virginia) also had the dubious honor of making SurePayroll's list of top ten states in which small business salaries fell the most. That's good news for those small business owners who prefer to pay employees less but it's bad news for small business workers.

Of the SurePayroll Top Ten — those states SurePayroll identifies as fast-growth states for small businesses in 2005 — only North Carolina had both growth in headcount and growth in average salaries over the past twelve months. Every other state in the SurePayroll Top Ten witnessed declines in average small business payrolls.

About the SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard
SurePayroll, the nation's fifth largest payroll provider and largest online payroll provider, aggregates data for more than 15,000 customers on a monthly basis and provides detailed information on small business employment, earnings, and subcontractor trends.

This week, SurePayroll released the January 2005 data for its Small Business Scorecard.

About SurePayroll:
Privately held SurePayroll is America's fifth largest payroll provider and the nation's largest online payroll provider. Catering exclusively to the needs of small businesses, SurePayroll provides a simple, reliable and economical way to process payroll in minutes via the Internet. In addition to providing payroll services directly to small business, SurePayroll also provides a private-label payroll service that allows SurePayroll's numerous partners to offer payroll processing to their small business clients. Business partners include Wells Fargo and ABN AMRO.

SurePayroll will process nearly $3 billion in employee and contractor payroll payments in 2005. For more information, visit www.surepayroll.com.

For Media Inquiries Contact:
Ken Gaebler
Walker Sands Communications
www.walkersands.com
Phone: (312) 543-0654
Email: surepayroll-inquiries@walkersands.com