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 I guess just goes to show that nonemployers are tough but not invincible. In 2008, they got the stuffing kicked out of them. Nonemployers, in case you need reminding, are firms with no paid employees outside the business owner(s) and at least $1000 in taxable receipts. This data set covers 18.8 million sole proprietorships, 1.5 million corporations and 1.1 million partnerships, which together comprise the total number of nonemployer businesses. Overall, there were 21.4 million of them in 2008, down from 21.7 million in 2007.

That’s only a net 350,000 firms lost but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The worst of the losses were in the real estate and construction sectors (which lost 330,000 firms between them), and additional losses occurred in agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, transportation/warehousing, information, and finance. Gains in the services sectors were simply not enough to make up for those losses. On a more positive note, the big story is in mining and, specifically, in oil and gas extraction. There, nonemployers increased their numbers by 7% and improved their annual earnings by a whopping 29%, which translates into an $18,000 raise on average. The big question now is whether there were similar declines in employer firms in 2008. These numbers certainly don’t suggest that there were many employers that shrank to nonemployer size. To complete the picture, we’ll just have to wait until next year.