CRANSTON – Small companies with just a few workers make up a significant portion of the Rhode Island economy, according to the R.I. Department of Labor & Training.
As of March – the latest period for which such figures are available – 48.2 percent of the 33,044 private businesses in the state had between one and four workers. Yet, though these smallest of companies made up nearly half of all Rhode Island businesses, they employed just 7.6 percent of the private-sector work force.
Companies with 19 or fewer workers comprised 89.7 percent of the state’s businesses and employed about 25.5 percent of the private work force.
Mid-sized companies of 20 to 99 workers made up 8.5 percent of firms statewide and employed 27.8 percent of the work force, the DLT said.
Very large businesses are rare in the Ocean State, the DLT said, with companies of 1,000 or more local workers making up less than 0.1 percent of Rhode Island employers though they accounted for 17.3 percent of the private-sector work force.
Indeed, the DLT reported only 575 firms (1.7 percent of the total) with payrolls of 100 or more, though together they employed 46.7 percent of the private sector work force.
Small companies were most common in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sector (98.2 percent), followed by “other services” (95.9 percent), construction (95.7 percent) and professional and technical services (94.8 percent), the DLT said.
Small firms were least common in manufacturing (75.1 percent), educational services (75.8 percent), utilities (79.1 percent) and accommodations and food services (79.3 percent).
Among companies employing 100 people or more in the state, more than half were in three sectors: health care and social assistance (143 firms), manufacturing (98) and retail (67).
The 10 largest private-sector employers – based on figures from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, included four hospitals – two supermarket chains, two financial institutions, a university and a pharmacy, the DLT said. No. 1 was Rhode Island Hospital, followed by Citizens Financial Group, Stop & Shop, Brown University, Bank of America Corp., Women & Infants Hospital, CVS Pharmacy, Kent Hospital, Shaw’s Supermarkets and The Miriam Hospital. (For details, see chart at right.)
Additional labor market information is available from the R.I. Department of Labor and Training at www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi.
