Small Business Share of GDP

In United States, in the economy, small businesses continue to play a vital role, during the 1998-2004 time period. The small business share of private non farm GDP held relatively steady from 1998 through 2004 at 50 percent of the total. However, there is a more dynamic picture when looking at the individual industries. While the small business share of many individual industries continued to decline during this time period, the share stabilized in the other services sector and rose slightly in the manufacturing sector.

The heavily small business dominated sectors of construction and professional and technical services saw their small business shares reduced over this time period But, the rapid growth in the size and number of all the businesses in several of the small-business dominated sectors of the economy offset the decline in the small business share of several of the individual industries and resulted in a stable share for small business GDP overall.

There are methods of extending the estimates of small business GDP beyond the current benchmark and using new data sources and different methodology to improve the estimates in the future.