I don’t know anybody who gets as excited as I do because of data.

That might be because it’s unusual. Or it might just be that I don’t get out often enough — but, somehow, I don’t think that’s it.

Under normal circumstances, I get to be excited twice a year: when the firm size class numbers are released in March and then again in June, when the nonemployer numbers are released.

(The nonemployer numbers used to be released in August but that got moved up. This is not something about which I am inclined to complain.)

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.

The numbers show us, for example, that microbusinesses started hurting at least 18 months before the official start of the recession. They show us the depth of this recession, which was severe enough to pound the nation’s ordinarily hardy nonemployers (many of which are firms that cost practically nothing to operate).

They show that certain trends are continuing, in spite of the recession. The middle is still shrinking. The number of nonemployers is still exploding, something that didn’t start until around the turn of the century. The number of microbusiness employers is growing faster than most other size categories.

More than anything, the numbers show us what real people are doing. What real people do matters more than anything.

It’s just too bad that the folks in Washington don’t seem to get that.