National Association of Counties * Washington, D.C.            Vol. 31, No. 20 * October 25, 1999

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Business Growth Continues

According to the annual County Business Patterns reports released by the Bureau of the Census in early October, Los Angeles County had the biggest growth in the number of businesses between 1996 and 1997 of all counties in the country. It also experienced the highest percentage of employee growth of any county.

Employee growth
With an increase of 3,287 businesses with paid employees, and a 3.4 percent growth (118,761) in the number of employees, Los Angeles County easily outstripped the national growth rate of 3 percent.

The services industry reported the largest gain with an increase of more than 1.6 million employees followed by the retail industry, which recorded a growth of 500,000 employees.

Payroll growth
Five counties are in the lead with the greatest increase in the amount of annual payrolls between 1996 and 1997. New York (Manhattan portion) had an increase of 8 percent from $102 billion in 1996 to $110 billion in 1997. Other counties in the top five are:

• Los Angeles County, Calif. had a payroll increase of $6.4 billion up to $115.8 billion (a 5.9 percent increase);
• Cook County, Ill. had a payroll increase of $5.3 billion to $84.6 billion (a 6.7 percent increase);
• Dallas County, Texas increased its payroll to $46.8 billion from $42.3 billion the previous year (a 10.7 percent increase);
• Harris County, Texas had an 8.9 percent increase to $51.2 billion up from $47 billion the prior year.

Business establishment growth
The growth of business establishments in the country was also led by Los Angles County with an increase of 3,287 businesses or a 1.5 percent increase between 1996 and 1997. They were followed by Maricopa County, Ariz., which had an increase of 5 percent (3,223 new businesses). New York, N.Y. (Manhattan portion) added 2,842 new businesses or 2.8 percent; Orange County, Calif. added 2,176 or a 3 percent increase and rounding out the top five is Clark County, Nev., with an increase of 2,062 businesses or a 9 percent increase.

The five counties with the greatest increase in the number of employees between 1996 and 1997
County	Employee Gain/Percent	Population Gain/Percent
Los Angeles County, Calif.	118,761 / 3.4%	60,430 / 1%
Dallas, Texas	82,455 / 6.4%	31,657 / 1%
Maricopa, Ariz.	79.347 / 7.1%	85,197 / 3%
Harris, Texas	67,653 / 4.7%	47,481 / 1%
New York, N.Y. (Manhattan)	66,707 / 3.6%	8,689 / less than 1%

In order to put the number of businesses in perspective nationally it is important to know that there are more than 20 million businesses in the country.

What is surprising is that two-thirds of these businesses are small, unincorporated businesses, generally operated by self-employed people, and had no other employees.

In 1997, only 6.8 million businesses had employees. Of these businesses, nearly 3.8 million had one to four employees. More than 40 percent of these smaller businesses are in the services industry with the next highest percentage (19 percent) in the retail trade. Nearly 1.4 million businesses employ five to nine employees with 36 percent of these businesses in the services industry and 27 percent in retail trade. Nearly 75 percent of all businesses with employees in the country have fewer than 10 employees. Only 6,182, or less than 1 percent, have 1,000 or more employees and of those largest businesses, 47 percent are in the services industry

For additional information about county business patterns in your state or county, visit the Census Bureau’s Web page at http://tier2.census.gov/cbp/cbp_sts.htm.

(NOTE: In the Sept. 27 issue of County News, the Research News column – “Who Comes First?” – focused on the protocol used by the Army when planning public events. NACo has added the Department of the Army Office of Protocol List to its Web page as a Research Brief. You may access it at http://www.naco.org/pubs/research/briefs/protocol.cfm.)

(Research News is written by Jacqueline Byers, research director.)