There are over 20 million personal businesses in the US. These are called "nonemployer firms" by the US Census and they consist of self-employed, freelancers, contractors, and other solo businesses. A new research report sponsored by the SBA covers some key statistics on these businesses. The data is from 2002, which is when the most recent Survey of Business Owners was conducted.
The chart below is taken from the data in the report and shows the number of personal businesses by revenue categories. As you can see, most personal businesses are small. According to the report, the median personal business in 2002 had just over $10,000 in revenue and the average was $47,000.
This study used the Survey of Business Owners data which counts anyone reporting $1,000 or more in schedule C income as owning a nonemployer business. This means part-time and hobby businesses are included. There are also a lot of full time personal businesses. As the chart shows, there were roughly 3.5 million personal businesses with over $50,000 in revenue in 2002.
The report contains a some other interesting data points on personal businesses
- The number of personal businesses grew at roughly twice the rate as employer businesses during the study period, 1992-2005
- 61% of personal businesses were home-based.
- 16.3% of personal businesses were owned by people under the age of 35.
- 38.7% of personal businesses were owned by women versus 27% of the employer businesses.
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Posted by: qwer | September 25, 2010 at 10:55 AM
Wow, I never realized that so few personal businesses broke the $1 mil mark.
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Posted by: Jacob | August 24, 2008 at 12:24 PM