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November 04. 2014 1:02PM Businesses with 20 or fewer employees see minimal job gains, slight revenue gains Small businesses with 20 or fewer employees added 15,000 jobs in October, the biggest rise since June. Intuit’s Small Business Indexes showed 0.07 percent growth, translating to just under 1 percent annually. Intuit, which tracks mom-and-pop business activity, reported the labor market for the smallest businesses is growing a little slower than the overall market. While total payroll employment has passed its pre-recession peak, small business remains below its peak by 750,000 jobs, or 3.5 percent. Much of this shortfall is attributed to the failure of construction to return to pre-recession levels. The new-hire rate has continued to rise slowly since June 2009 and rose again this month by 0.2 percent, showing a trend among small business owners to hire rather than push current employees to work more hours. Compensation rose by a nickel an hour to $16.20 for hourly workers. The data is based on approximately 247,000 small businesses customers of Intuit Online Payroll and QuickBooks Online Payroll, covering the period from Sept. 24 through Oct. 23. Revenue has been flat in the micro businesses as well. Intuit Small Business Revenue Index showed revenue growth of just  0.03 percent. Intuit's Revenue Index is based on aggregated data from more than 150,000 QuickBooks Online small businesses. Real estate and construction sectors  showed the largest increases of 0.3 percent, while the health care industry saw the largest decrease of 0.07 percent. Hourly small business employees saw an increase in monthly compensation of 0.08 percent, with average monthly pay reaching the equivalent of $2,776, up $2 from September. Average monthly hours worked by hourly employees decreased by 0.03 percent to 109.1 hours in October, losing an average of two minutes over the month.   http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141104/NEWS/141109873 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->