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Business
& Finance . The Economy: How Big Is Big Business in Vermont? -- Page 2 How does Vermont compare with other
states? ... The Statistics provided aggregate data for the percentages of workers employed in enterprises of 20+, 100+, and 500+ employees. In other words, the percentages for enterprises of 20+ employees included all businesses with 20 or more employees, not only those with between 20-100 employees, etc. The data were provided for each state and D.C. We then took this data, interpolated the percentages for businesses with fewer than 20 employees, and ranked each state. Keep in mind that, unlike the data in the tables above, where percentages are calculated for individual establishments, these data are for the parent organizations which often, especially for larger businesses, run more than one establishment.
For
small businesses of less than 20 employees, Vermont ranked 7th at 87.9% of all
businesses. Florida took 1st place with 90.1%, followed by New York
[89.6%], Montana [89.4%], and a three-way tie for 4th place that included
Alaska, Maine, and New Jersey at 88.5%. At the other end, Washington,
D.C., ranked 51st with the smallest percentage of businesses with less than 20
employees; but this group still accounted for more than three-fourths [76.8%] of
all businesses there. Delaware was one notch above in 50th place, with 82%
of all business enterprises at less than 20 employees. Can
a State Have It Both Ways? ... Vermont's higher ranking for the largest business enterprises would seem to go against the common assumption that Vermont is not a home to big businesses. So we wanted to find a way, however loosely, to try to rank each of the states overall for all business sizes. In that context, we decided to run a statistical standardization for each state and each business size category, then run a linear trend from the normalized data for each state. The result, we thought, would give some indication of overall status -- the higher the linear trend rate, the more that state would be a home to bigger businesses, and vice versa. The table below shows the results of that number crunching for both the top and bottom ten, i.e., states which are home to the greatest and lowest percentages of larger businesses, respectively, as well as Vermont's ranking.
Overall, Vermont showed only a slightly negative trend [-0.22] when it came to the percentage of large vs. small businesses. That placed it in roughly the middle of the pack at 28th place. The top spot went to D.C., with a trend rate of 8.27, followed by 2nd place Delaware at 6.15, most likely because of the fact that many the nation's largest corporations are registered in that state, which has more corporate-hospitable laws. Nevada posted a 3rd place finish at 3.18. Our neighbor to the east -- New Hampshire -- managed a 6th place finish for its hospitality to larger businesses, with a trend rate of 1.02. At the bottom of the list, however, was our neighbor to the west. New York posted a trend rate of -3.19, edging out Florida for that position by only 0.07 points. California posted a 3rd place finish at -2.93, followed by New Jersey at -2.18. While other things may be at play here, the most likely candidate for explaining these showing is probably these state's tax rates. So, when it comes to big business, Vermont's middle-of-the-road position and its only-slightly negative trend placed it in very mixed company. In this territory, Connecticut, with a trend rate of -0.04, Maryland [-0.15], and Iowa [-0.21] bested Vermont slightly, while on the other side, Vermont bested Oklahoma [-0.30], Georgia [-0.31], and Alaska [-0.35]. One would be somewhat hard pressed to find the common thread to help explain the similarities here. But the best explanation might be a fairly simple one. While the range separating top place D.C. from bottom place New York was 11.46 points overall. With a standard deviation at 1.91 and a median of -0.15, more than two-thirds of the states were clustered with trend rates between -1.44 and 0.72. In this light, then -- barring the kind of corporate-inclined laws found in Delaware or the high tax rates of states like New York or California -- most states would seem to be only slightly more or less inclined to be the home of big businesses. And Vermont, on this score as on many others, is in the middle of the road.
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