Small businesses with employees 1-49 are struggling in 2024. Large businesses are booming.
Please consider the ADP® National Employment Report for November 2024.
While overall growth for the month was healthy, industry performance was mixed. Manufacturing was the weakest we’ve seen since spring. Financial services and leisure and hospitality were also soft.
The focus of this report is on small businesses. I believe part of the error in the BLS monthly jobs reports is undersampling of small businesses and oversampling of large employers.
20-49 Employees
Employment in businesses with 20-49 employees is down 8 of 11 months in 2024, shedding a total of 99,000 jobs.
Year-Over-Year Employment Trends by Employer Size
Year-Over-Year Employment by Employer Size in Thousands
- 1-19: Jan 2024 +994, Nov 2024 +140
- 20-49: Jan 2024 +837, Nov 2024 -118
- 50-249: Jan 2024 +1,142, Nov 2024 +578
- 250-499: Jan 2024 +171, Nov 2024 +261
- 500+: Jan 2024 +219, Nov 2024 +860
Year-Over-Year Change in Small, Medium, Large Employment
Year-over-year employment in small businesses is down from 1.8 million in January to a mere 22,000 in November.
Trends are especially ominous in businesses of 20-49 employees, down by 118,000 (previous chart).
Total Employment by Employer Size
The above chart puts the shrinkage of small business expansion into the proper light.
Small businesses employ more people than medium business and large businesses.
Small business employment is 43.3 percent of total employment and growth has stalled.
If you are looking for reasons Trump won the election, there is another one.
Quarterly QCEW Data Provides More Evidence of BLS Jobs Overstatement
On November 20, I commented Quarterly QCEW Data Provides More Evidence of BLS Jobs Overstatement
My prior comparisons and advance calls suggest we see negative revisions in nonfarm payrolls from 2023 Q2 to 2024 Q2 of well over one million. My initial stab is about 1.2 million to the downside.
The BLS Birth-Death model is seriously messed up an/or the BLS is oversampling large corporations and under sampling small businesses.
The BLS monthly nonfarm payroll reports are consistent garbage.
Reflections on BEA Revisions
If jobs are overstated, income is too. And on Wednesday we found out the BEA overstated wages by a massive $91.8 billion from $156.8 billion to $65.0 billion.
Please note the Huge Negative Revision of $91.8 billion to Second-Quarter Private Wages
The BEA commented “With the incorporation of these new QCEW data, real gross domestic income is now estimated to have increased 2.0 percent in the second quarter, a downward revision of 1.4 percentage points from the previously published 3.4 percent estimate.”
I commented “The BEA hugely revised GDI to the downside. Hmm. It seems that voters weren’t fooled.”
Click on the above link for more details and charts.
Continued Unemployment Claims Increase Another 9,000
November 29: Continued Unemployment Claims Increase Another 9,000, It’s Recession Looking
It’s increasingly hard to find another job if you lose one.
Nonfarm payrolls are Friday. Expect another joke plus more revisions.