New York’ economy is heavily dependent on the performance of small businesses as the majority of the business sector in the city is dominated by small businesses. As per the definition by SBA, firms with fewer than 500 employees is termed as small business. Going by that definition, it is found that majority of the private sector firms in New York are small businesses which account for more than 50% of all private sector jobs.
In New York State, there are a total of 517,237, among them 518,632 firms were small businesses, constituting to about 99.7%. These firms on an average employed 9 people each.
One-third of one percent of all firms had more than 500 people. Each of these 1,395 firms had an average of about 850 employees. Around 60 percent of all businesses in New York State have fewer than four employees. 87.9% (456,034) of alll firms present in the New York State are small businesses having less than 20 employees. Apart from that 1.5 million firms were found to have no employees, i.e proprietor owned.
According to 2006 statistics, 3.9 million jobs (51.7%) out of 7.5 million private jobs in private sector in New York were in the small business firms. Almost 1.5 million jobs (19.4%) were in the companies having fewer than 20 employees.
According to the 2008 data, a total of 518,632 firms were existing in New York State , out of which 75,853 (14.6 percent), belonged to retail trade, making it the largest business sector in the whole nation. Of the total retail companies, 87.9% were small businesses having less than 20 employees. 58,518 firms (11.3 percent), belonged to professional, scientific and technical services, among which 92.3 percent were small businesses having less than 20 employees. 54,459 firms (10.5%) belonged to health care and assistance sector, of which 84.9% were small businesses having less than 20 employees.