The Economic Impact of Small Business in New York State
Among the more than 455,000 businesses in New York, over 451,000 are small businesses. In addition, there are over 1.6 million non-employer businesses in New York, which are primarily self-employed individuals. Of the small businesses with paid employees in 2013, almost two-thirds had fewer than five employees, with over 80 percent having fewer than ten employees. These 369,000 microbusinesses provided nearly 943,000 jobs with total payroll close to $40 billion. Businesses with fewer than 20 employees reported total employment of nearly 1.5 million, with total payroll of $63.2 billion.
Over the most recent decade for which figures are available, New York’s small businesses fared better than the nation’s on three key metrics – number of firms, employment, and total payroll. Small business employment in the State rose by a net 1.6 percent, or 59,000 jobs, in the ten-year period through 2013, while declining nationally by 1.1 percent. The number of such firms fluctuated over the period, ending virtually unchanged nationally but rising 5 percent in the Empire State. And total payrolls at small businesses rose 29.7 percent in New York, modestly more than the national average.
Overall, small businesses in New York employed nearly 3.9 million workers in 2013, accounting for a little over half of all private sector employment in the State. In addition, these businesses had almost $190 billion in payroll, approximately 41 percent of total payroll. Firms with 20 to 99 employees comprised approximately one-third of the total small business employment, over 1.2 million employees. The larger firms (those with 100 to 499 employees) had the highest average payroll per employee, nearly $56,000 per year.
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