PROVIDENCE – More than half, 52.7 percent, or 224,254 individuals, of the state’s workforce was employed at 99,821 small businesses operating in the state in 2015, according to the 2018 Small Business Administration Rhode Island profile released last week.
Those nearly 100,000 Rhode Island-based small businesses represent an increase of 1,687 such firms in the Ocean State since the publication of the 2017 profile, which reported data from 2014.
In 2018 profile, the industries with the most small business employment were health care and social assistance (44,621), accommodation and food services (33,794) and manufacturing (25,483). Those categories remain unchanged from the 2017 profile which measured their employment at 44,690, 33,149 and 26,521 respectively.
Nearly one-in-seven of the 99,821 Rhode Island small businesses – 14,729 – were owned by minorities in 2015. There were the same number of minority-owned small businesses in Rhode Island in 2014, per the 2017 profile.
A national collection of 2018 state profiles found 30.2 million small businesses operating in the United States in 2015 employing 58.9 million people or 47.5 percent of the nation’s private sector workforce.
Nearly 2 million – 1.9 million – net jobs were created by U.S. small businesses nationwide in 2015.
Across the country, the three industries with the most small business employment, as of 2015, were health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services and retail trade.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
