1,000 firms run the economy

["Eric Nilsson" <enilsson@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well not quite...

But data I just put in my spiffy text is:

Number of firms with 1-99 employees in the US: 4,800,582 (or 98% of all
firms with employees)
Number of firms with 10,000 or more employees:       936 (or 0.002% of all
firms with employees)

Number of employees working in firms with 1-99 employees: 40,091,449 (or 36%
of employees)
Number of employees working in firms with 10,000 or more employees:
29,715,945 (or 27% of employees)

That is, fewer than 1,000 firms control the labor of more than 25% of all
employees in the US economy. These same firms, of course, control a large
part of the surplus generated within the US economy also. A large proportion
of workers, however, work for very small firms (less than 100 employees) but
none of these firms is really very important (economically, politically,
culturally, etc).

I would never argue a political strategy of pitting "small firms" again the
giant firms. Rather, I point out the role of these giant firms to underline
that way that the decisions of a relatively small number of firms (over what
to make, what sort of jobs to provide, what ad campaigns to run, etc) has a
really big impact on the whole economy.

Source http://www.census.gov/csd/susb/susb2.htm. US Census Bureau,
Statistics of US Businesses, 1999 data

Eric








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