Small businesses are RI's largest employer

Rhode Island small businesses represented 95.9 percent of all employers in the state in 2009, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The SBA’s Office of Advocacy released small business profiles for the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories on Thursday.

Full Story: Small businesses are R.I.’s largest employer Source: Providence Business News, January 30th, 2012 Added on January 30th, 2012 at 9:09 am, by Muse en Lystrala

Comments

AndrewBrown

Submitted on June 23rd, 2012 - 3:29am link

That means the main economy of RI directly depends only on small businesses. Just gone through that article but not getting any particular reason behind this, so would like to know why the percentage of self employment is dropping so far in RI!

simultaneous interpretation

JVan

Submitted on June 29th, 2012 - 8:41pm link

I wouldn't go as far as to say ENTIRELY dependent...greatly dependent is probably more accurate. RI has always had a large small business community, which is a bit surprising, as there's never been a great deal of support or attention given to most of them. Most are bootstrapped (at least I get that sense) and most are decidedly non-tech, which explains why they're often overlooked by the powers that be. What, after all, is sexy about a scrap metal business?

The reason for a higher failure rate, IMHO, lies in the lack of support that most entrepreneurs and independent professionals receive from the state. MA, CT, even ME have robust, active support programs for SMBs that we do not, unless your area is in tech or health/life sciences...