The Top 10 Cities Where Small-Biz Jobs Are Growing

The Top 10 Cities Where Small-Biz Jobs Are Growing

6) Dallas, TX
Flickr/Ron Doke
By Millie Dent

Small businesses have been hiring, though at a slower rate than this time last year, according to the Paychex|IHS job index.

For the 11th month in a row, Dallas’s small businesses have shown the most employment gains. The city boasts the top 12-month growth rate at 1.38 percent. Detroit (1.35 percent), San Diego (1.27 percent), Baltimore and St. Louis (both 1.13 percent) round out the top five. Houston’s recent performance is also impressive, with a rebound in growth rates over the past three months compared with declines during the rest of the year.

Related: This Is the Best Time Since the Recession to Get a Small Business Loan 

Only five states saw positive gains in employment rates over the past year, and none of them increased by a full statistical point. One notable state is Michigan, which ranks second behind Wisconsin, as the state with the highest employment gains in small businesses since 2004. It also came in second for highest gains in the past year.

The index numbers used by Paychex for cities and states is based on the current small business employment rate as compared with 2004. Paychex uses 2004 as the base period to compare current gains against because it was a year of expansion for small businesses. Below 100, and the rate is lower than in 2004. Above 100, and the rate is higher than in 2004. 

The charts below rank the cities and states based on their index levels.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times

Stat of the Day: 0.2%

U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 23, 2018.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Jonathan Ernst
By The Fiscal Times Staff

The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”

Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.

Number of the Day: 44%

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff

The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”

Number of the Day: 4,229

U.S. President Trump delivers remarks in Washington
JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS
By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”

The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.

Number of the Day: $3 Billion

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff

A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”

Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs

Martin Rangel, a worker at Bremen Castings, pours motel metal into forms on the foundry’s production line in Bremen
STAFF
By The Fiscal Times Staff

President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.