Payroll employment declined by 11,000 in November and the unemployment rate edged down slightly, to 10.0%. It’s a sign of the times that the news was greeted with a certain amount of relief and cautious optimism in certain quarters in Washington. But while the politicians are sniping among themselves about whether or not the decline in job losses is good news, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its business employment dynamics data for the first quarter of this year, giving us a much deeper sense of the state of the labor market than the rather simplistic monthly jobs data. That is because this data details the number of jobs created, the number of jobs lost and the net jobs created or lost, per calendar quarter. That information is also segmented by industry sector, by state and by firm size class — which is very convenient for us.

From this data, we know that the smallest firm size class (fewer than five employees) created about three jobs for ever four job cuts experienced. At the other end of the size spectrum, firms with over 1,000 employees were creating one job for every two they cut. The real pain in the small business labor market for the period, however, can be found among the larger small businesses. While firms with between 10 and 19 employees were in about the same shape as the smaller size classes, those with 20-49 workers were cutting 3 jobs for every two they created. The two size classes covering firms with between 50 and 249 employees were losing five jobs for every three they created. Non-micro small businesses with between 10 and 499 employees accounted for almost half of the 2.8 million jobs lost during the first quarter. When the dust clears, it looks like a lot of firms will be a lot smaller than they used to be.