NFIB

Congress has created America's first Entrepreneurship Week USA, held February 24 - March 3, 2007.  Entrepreneurship Week USA will be a collection of thousands of activities, ranging from high-school competitions to academic gatherings and local town halls to a national policy summit. More than 1,000 organizations throughout the country have answered the call, planning activities in all 50 states.

The Small Business Administration shares these statistics about the impact of small business on the American economy:

• Across the United States, small businesses make up more than 99.7 percent of all employers.
• Small businesses drive the economy.  They generate more than 50 percent of our country's nonfarm private gross domestic product.
• Innovation sparks our economy and raises our standard of living. Americans rely on the creative spark of entrepreneurs because small "patenting firms" produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than their larger competitors do.
• Small business has a big presence, as there are more than 25.8 million of them in the United States.
• Not only are there the small businesses we see, there is a "hidden economy" too. From high-tech garage start-ups to freelance writers, home-based businesses account for about 53 percent of all small businesses.
• Small businesses keep America working as they employ half of all private sector workers.
• Small businesses help us reduce our trade deficit. Small firms are 97 percent of all exporters, and they produce 29 percent of all export value.
• Small businesses are dynamic and continually changing to meet consumer demand and market needs.  Almost 700,000 small firms with employees start up every year.
• Small business is leading our rapid economic growth. Over the past decade, small firms created between 60 and 80 percent of the net new jobs in our economy.
• Despite their contributions to the economy, small businesses face a disproportionate regulatory burden.  Very small firms with fewer than 20 employees spend 45 percent more per employee than larger firms do to comply with federal regulations.
• The manufacturing sector is especially hard hit when it comes to disproportionate regulatory burden. The per-employee annual regulatory compliance cost for manufacturers with fewer than 20 employees is more than two-and-a-half times higher than it is for manufacturers with 500 or more employees.