Net hiring at small businesses
Reference
Methodology
How the Gusto Small Business Jobs Number is measured.
The Gusto Small Business Jobs Report tracks anonymized payroll data from a stratified random sample of small businesses across the United States with 1–49 employees, based on the 500,000+ companies on Gusto. All figures in this report are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise noted.
Key metrics
Seasonal adjustment
All data are seasonally adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau’s X-13ARIMA-SEATS methodology to account for predictable fluctuations throughout the year, making it easier to identify meaningful trends in small business employment.
Sample selection and weighting
To ensure the findings represent small businesses across the United States, Gusto uses a two-stage weighting process.
First, we randomly select a representative sample of companies that match the national distribution of small businesses by industry, company size, and geographic region, using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages” data as a benchmark. Each January, we choose a random sample of companies to include for the year:
Annual sample sizes, 2019–2025
Second, we adjust the sample to reflect the national distribution of company ages based on data from the Census Bureau’s “Business Dynamics Statistics.”