President brings daughters to bookstore to promote small-business holiday shopping

bigtree

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Sat Nov-26-11 12:51 PM
Original message

President brings daughters to bookstore to promote small-business holiday shopping

Edited on Sat Nov-26-11 12:54 PM by bigtree

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(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

WASHINGTON (AP) � President Barack Obama has pitched in to help small businesses get into the holiday shopping season.

The president took his daughters, Malia and Sasha, along on a shopping run to a bookstore a few blocks from the White House.

He says he made the visit because it's "small business Saturday" and he wanted to support a small business.

The retail industry is encouraging shoppers to patronize mom-and-pop businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It's a counterpoint to Black Friday and the sales and special deals offered by department stores and other large retailers.

The Obamas walked out with a selection of books including "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," ''Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever" and "Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia."

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read: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gcjP2D5UlLTEGLCqPKncIbi3iBzA?docId=0577538c0c4c4a579e4b6f1bd5ed3b91

Small firms:
� Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
� Employ about half of all private sector employees.
� Pay 43 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
� Have generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
� Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
� Hire 43 percent of high tech workers (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
� Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
� Made up 97.5 percent of all identified exporters and produced 31 percent of export value in FY 2008.
� Produce 16.5 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.

In 2009, there were 27.5 million businesses in the United States, according to Office of Advocacy estimates. The latest available Census data show that there were 5.9 million firms with employees in 2008 and 21.4 million without employees in 2008. Small firms with fewer than 500 employees represent 99.9 percent of the total (employers and nonemployers), as the most recent data show there were 18,469 large businesses in 2008.

Small businesses employ about half of U.S. workers. Of the 120.9 million nonfarm private sector workers in 2008, small firms employed 59.7 million and large firms employed 61.2 million. About half of small firm employment is in second-stage companies (10-99 employees), and half is in firms that are 15 years or older. Small firms� share of employment in rural areas is slightly higher than in urban areas; their share of part-time workers (22 percent) is similar to large firms� share (19 percent). Small firms� employment share remains steady since some small firms grow into large firms over time

Small firms accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8 million) of the 15 million net new jobs created between 1993 and 2009. Much of the job growth is from fast-growing high-impact firms, which represent about 5�6 percent of all firms and are on average 25 years old.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau and Intl. Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (archive.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299tot.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (archive.sba.gov/advo/research/rs225tot.pdf); U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/sbfaq.pdf