Small firms with 1-20 workers make up the majority of employer firms in the US. But these businesses, especially those in low-income neighborhoods, are under-examined in existing research like large economic surveys. Here's why, and here's how the Small Firm Diaries proposes to help fill the gap.

The Financial Access Initiative started conducting in-depth, diaries-style analyses on small firms in 2021, with studies in 7 countries....

We launched the Small Firm Diaries because after decades of work trying to help microenterprises to grow into small firms, there was still very little work to describe and understand existing small firms . Given the dearth of data on small firms we created a simple dividing line between micro and small: at least one paid worker. Our delineation between small and medium was a bit more nebulous: no full-time, non-owner managers (we used less than 20 paid workers as a fuzzy prox

To mark International Workers Day, we’re sharing findings and data we collected about employment and jobs in the Small Firm Diaries.