Small businesses continued to add jobs last month, according to a new report from Paychex which placed North Carolina among the best in the nation for small businesses.
WRAL TechWire reports, according to the Small Business Jobs Index, North Carolina ranked second in the nation in the rate of small business employment growth last month, with an index measure of 102.75. North Carolina was only edged out of the top spot by Texas, by 0.1 point.
Further, in North Carolina, the 12-month growth was 2.16%, according to the report. That’s actually faster than Texas, which saw a 2.13% growth year-over-year.
The south was the strongest region for small business employment growth. Economists predict that growth, along with an active labor market, could buffer the state’s economy.
“July will be a key month to watch the releases of economic data to determine if we are headed into a recession,” Anne York, an economist, professor, and program director at Meredith College, said. “Our North Carolina economy tends to track the direction of the national economy fairly closely. We are fortunate in North Carolina to rely on a diversified set of industries that will keep our economy more stable than states who rely on fewer industries.”
North Carolina outperformed the regional average when it comes to hourly wage growth, ranking fourth of any state, with an hourly wage growth of 5.92%, the data show.
“The small business economy still is in recovery phase with continued job gains, and, surprisingly, moderating wage gains,” James Diffley, chief regional economist at IHS Markit, said in a statement.
IHS Markit and Paychex jointly release the monthly index, which draws from data of about 350,000 Paychex clients.
Small Businesses in the Charlotte Region
The amount of small businesses in the Charlotte Region underscores their importance to the overall economy.
According to the most recent data from the US Census Bureau, there are more than 40,000 firms1 in the Charlotte Region with nineteen or fewer employees.2 These firms represent about 75% of all firms in the region.
This is slightly less than North and South Carolina which both have more than 80% of all firms in this category. The share of firms with fewer than 19 employees has remained consistent over the past couple of decades in the Charlotte Region, while there has been a modest drop since the late 1970s when the US Census began collecting this information.
Despite a large majority of firms having few employees, more than 50 percent of employment in the region is with large firms with more than 500 employees, demonstrating the importance of both small and large businesses to the Charlotte regional economy.
