Finally — Small Business Owners Treated as Gainfully Employed
- 9 Comments
- December 16th, 2008
Steve King points out a new website with free research capabilities. The Edward Lowe Foundation launched YourEconomy.org. It’s a free research website that allows users to examine and use small business data. The data comes from the Nets database, which is based on D&B data.
Although not all of the YourEconomy.org site is yet functional, it appears promising. The best part to me is that the Nets/D&B data actually includes business owners and proprietors within its definition of jobs.
You see, I’ve always thought it was ludicrous that U.S. government statistics do not count the business owner’s employment when counting up employment figures.
The government distinguishes “non-employer” businesses from other kinds of businesses. A non-employer business essentially means a one-person business or a self-employed person. In the case of those “non-employer” businesses, the business owner (or owners in the case of a mom-and-pop shop) would not be considered employees for purposes of government statistics.
Thus you had the bizarre situation where over 21 million business owners are not considered employed for government purposes (wish they’d tell the IRS that!). That in turn led to some less-than-knowledgeable people dissing these “non-employer” businesses because they don’t create “jobs.”
As if running your business wasn’t contributing to the economy…. In the eyes of some, I guess we’re just a bunch of slackers. 
One of these days, maybe the government will get with the program and update their statistics. Meanwhile, at least we have a source of research that gives the full employment picture.
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That does surprise me too. Just because we may not have a large employer base does not make us any less significant than other businesses. The statistics in the link provided are very interesting to see.
ReplyAnyone who finds this article surprising should also be aware that the same “U.S. Government statistics regarding the unemployment rate(s)” DO NOT include any individual(s) that have been out of work longer than 6-12 months. Anyone care to guess what the REAL rate – including those individuals – in our country is?
ReplyThe goverment types always yakking about jobs act like they are something that grow on trees like oranges. People don’t understand that jobs are the end result of businesses that grow. Grow the business, and jobs result. But you can’t set out to “grow” jobs. If they understood this basic fact, they’d have more respect for the work of the entrepreneur.
ReplyThanks for linking to this resource. I have to learn more about Edward Lowe Foundation and how he succeed in the cat litter business!
ReplyThat sounds really great, Anita. Well, I think it’s time for me to check out that site too.
ReplyThis information does not surprise me at all, since a lot of small business owners and self-employed individuals do not understand that THEY are employees of their own businesses. When I give clients this “bad” news the expression on their face is priceless. A few weeks ago, I had a client ask “at what point do I stop being an employee of the business and start being the owner?”
ReplyAmanda, yes, that’s exactly the point: businesses that do not have employees are NOT any less significant. Unfortunately, it trivializes the contributions of those businesses to not count the employer’s occupation as a job. It says: “YOUR work doesn’t count.”
Bob, not enough is done to help the chronically unemployed become gainfully employed, that’s true, and after a time they just fall off the radar and are treated as if they don’t exist. Of course we are talking here about just counting those who ARE employed — in their own businesses — something the guvmint doesn’t do well either.
– Anita
ReplyWalt, couldn’t agree with you more. My view is that the government should spend more effort tracking business starts and growth of those same businesses, and calculate realistic time frames for how long it takes on average for a business to go from sole proprietor, to 5 employees, to 10 employees and so on. They should also calculate a metric to measure the value to the economy of a sole proprietor who never hires an employee. Those kinds of numbers would show real contribution to the economy. There’s a stunning lack of information about business growth in our statistics, and consequently few understand what a sole proprietor business means to the country, to our local communities, to our economy.
Martin, well I just learned something from you. I had no idea that Edward Lowe made his money from the cat litter business. Of course, I’ve long known that the pet industry is booming, so I guess I should not be surprised.
– Anita
ReplyAnita: People spend plenty of money on their pets. Our cat, Morris, is a great value for our family and we feed him with quality cat food. He has used several collars through the years. He is good at taken them off somehow…
The latest thing is that my brother has bought a Mr. Lee cat cam and GPS tracking system. Stay tuned for pictures taken by Morris the cat and see his tracking route by GPS.
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