Last week might have been described as euphoric for me, because both the firm size class numbers for 2007 and the nonemployer numbers for 2008 were released. When does that ever happen?

And it is usually around this time that at least one person wonders what the big deal is. After all, they’re just numbers, right?

And that’s true. These releases are not contained on other people’s research reports, like most of the research I cover. They are raw data, nothing but numbers.

But these numbers, over time, show trends. Those trends matter, to both the microbusinesses they describe and the overall economy they inhabit.

Last week was a good one, if you’re a data wonk. In addition to the firm size class numbers for 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau also released new nonemployer numbers for 2008. The surprising news about 2008 for nonemployers is that their numbers fell for the first time since Census has been keeping track. Which [...]

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau and the SBA Office of Advocacy finally released the 2007 firm size class numbers that we normally see in March. In 2007, there were 27.8 million U.S. businesses, up from 26.8 million in 2006. That represents a 3.6% increase in the U.S. business population and that’s a pretty healthy [...]

Earlier this month, Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and former Chair Senator John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the Small Business Broadband and Emerging Information Technology Enhancement Act (S. 3506). This legislation codifies several of the recommendations made by the FCC in its report to Congress earlier this year, in which [...]

Thanks to the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau is just a little busy this year, we won’t be seeing the firm size class numbers for 2007 until later this month. Almost on the heels of that release, somewhere in the middle of the demographics data from the 2007 Economic Census, the 2008 nonemployer numbers [...]

There’s a problem. The problem is that there are some “unscrupulous” employers that take advantage of the desperation in the labor market to deliberately misclassify employees as independent contractors. That means that the employees involved probably are not properly filing IRS Schedule C, contributing to the tax gap, and law-abiding employers are (allegedly) at a [...]

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a dinner at which one of the speakers, a local boy made good, was a member of the Obama Administration. He described the environment in which he worked perfectly. “Washington, D.C. is an interesting place,” he said, “that is completely surrounded by the real world.” Truer [...]

Last week, I told you about new legislation introduced by Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Committee Member Ben Cardin (D-MD) to improve the 8(a) program for “socially and economically disadvantaged” entrepreneurs — with a focus on federal procurement. Chairwoman Landrieu spent still more time on the issue of [...]

If you wanted to support a business in your community through a severe economic downturn, there are only two ways you could do that directly. You would have to either give the business owner money to invest in his business (equity capital) or you would have to buy things from that business. Most people are [...]

Amidst all the jumping up and down and yelling about the health care reform bill that was signed into law earlier this year, very little attention was paid to an obscure provision about 1099s. But that obscure tax provision is expected to increased the tax compliance paperwork burden for microbusinesses by an absurd 1250%, according [...]