Delaware Says Think Small for Growth

Growth has been hard to come by during the past 3 years anywhere. If the situation in Delaware is any indication, the recovery underway may be getting more help from small business than the nation's Fortune 500 companies.

Delaware may be known as the home of large corporations, but small businesses experienced greater job growth in the past year.

A recent report by the Delaware Department of Labor found that employers with fewer than 100 workers experienced 1 percent job growth for the year ending in mid-March, the most recent data available. Businesses with 100 or more workers lost 3 percent of their jobs in that period.

The nation's economy has shown some signs of recovering, but the lack of overall job growth has kept the forecast somewhat murky on this Labor Day. Still, the performance by small businesses, traditionally an early indicator of recovery, is encouraging.

"We are reasonably optimistic that things will certainly be better by the end of the year," said William J. Dennis Jr., senior research fellow at the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation.

He expects a 3 percent rise nationwide in revenue for small businesses by the end of the year. State officials have not issued an official small-business outlook, but state labor analyst Ed Simon predicts that small companies will continue to produce more jobs than larger employers and set the pace for the recovery.

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