Employers Are Not Like Nonemployers!
Aug 18th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: ResearchThis week, I’m happy to report yet another bit of startling research on small businesses. Here’s the news: employer businesses are different from nonemployer businesses, according to a data analysis released last week by the SBA Office of Advocacy. On its surface, I’m sure that statement must seem so obvious that it shouldn’t even need to be said, let alone studied. But this paper is actually a critical step in small business research.
There are any number ideas about small firms that might be called common knowledge (or common sense) by most of us but they are not generally accepted as a part of the body of established fact about small businesses until somebody researches them and proves them to be true. In that case, since no one had come along to point out that employers are different from nonemployers in several important and measurable ways — things like average revenues, types of financing used, legal structure of the business, demographics and more — it makes no sense to research one group and extrapolate the results to apply to the other. It also makes no sense to research them together, since nonemployer numbers so overwhelm employers that any results would be skewed to the larger group. So, now that we know all that, one hopes that knowledge will lead to some much-needed research on nonemployers.
