Less Than One Percent of Businesses Employ Half of the Private Sector Workforce

While over 90 percent of all firms have between 0 and 20 employees, these firms only employ 19.2 percent of all private sector workers. These small firms can be anything from coffee shops to small car dealerships and are organized as both pass-through businesses and C corporations.

On the other hand, while only 0.4 percent of all firms have over 500 employees, this small group of businesses employs 50.6 percent of the nation’s private sector workforce, with most of those employees working for C corporations. In fact, some of the world’s largest companies employ nearly a quarter of a million people each.

For more charts like this, please see our new chart book, Business in America: Illustrated.