Friday, May 06, 2005
Small Business Still Chugging Along
As implied by the GDP rate being higher than productivity, and a string of good initial jobless claims reports, unemployment held steady at 5.2%, payroll employment was up 274,000, and February and March payroll employment was raised by 100,000 more. The household survey showed an increase in employment of 598,000! My tracking of net new businesses is now up to 71,500 per month. Compared to April of last year, net new businesses are up 14%. This probably means that the first quarter GDP estimate will be revised up as well. It's small business that's "doing it" and the mechanisms that track the small business economy used by the government are not that good. There's nothing like making the "experts" upset, and this report does just that.
Employment report http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Employment report http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm