- Sources we gathered are from academic journals such as JSTOR, APEM, and SAGE, market databases such as Statista, and various government sources, mainly the Census Bureau
- Obtained datasets such as the Complete ZIP Code Industry Detail File for the year 2019 from the United States Census Bureau website
- This file contains information about the number of businesses in America grouped by zip code, by industry, and by number of employees.
- Data from this file was extracted and filtered using R
- Looked at only the companies in Georgia
- Sorted into relevant industries
- Compared the number of businesses with less than 10 employees with those employing more than 10 people
Introduction & Background
The Distribution of Micro-Businesses Throughout Industries in Georgia
DART 3 - Lucas Goldfein, Thu Nguyen, Jack North, Tejas Pulavarti, Mark Si, Grace Wu
- In-depth industry analysis of micro-businesses in Georgia
- Motivated to learn how micro-businesses are spread out across different industries, locate commonalities, and examine social impact
- Gaps in current research regarding how to what extent micro-businesses have a social impact
- Questions we have examined:
- Which industries in the US have the largest numbers of micro-businesses?
- What are the commonalities of those industries, in terms of raw numbers and proportions?
- To what degree do the micro-business industries in these areas generate social impact, in terms of providing jobs, serving customers, and environmental sustainability?
- Professional, scientific, and technical services sector had highest number of microbusinesses
- Includes legal services, accounting, technical and management consulting, computer systems design, scientific research, etc.
- Relatively easier for people to be self-employed in this sector and be counted as a micro-business
- Fewer monetary barriers
- Real estate industry also has lower monetary barriers
- Industries with least numbers of micro-businesses face similar challenges
- Micro-businesses in restaurant industry often fail due to lack of:
- Good location
- Start-up capital
- Other one-time costs
- Management of Companies and Enterprises industry requires
- Certification
- Business plan
- Multiple costs
- Manufacturing industry challenges:
- Rising costs of material and labor
- Insufficient capital
- Competition
- These sectors also struggle with marketing strategy
- Capital intensive businesses not conducive to being micro-businesses due to low success rate while businesses that are strategy-heavy without being capital intensive work well as micro-businesses
Number of Microbusiness in Georgia
Microbusiness v. Non-Microbusiness in Georgia
Percentage of Microbusiness Across Areas