I get these emails from ADP from time to time. I find them interesting so I do not object. I was especially struck with the last one. According to ADP's Small Business Report small-size businesses (50 employees are less) lost 281,000 jobs in December, the largest decline in small-size business employment recorded by the ADP Small Business Report since the beginning of the ADP National Employment Report dataset in December 2000.

The ADP Small Business Report is a subset of the ADP National Employment Report:

Total small business employment: -281,000

Goods-producing sector: -80,000 small business jobs

Service-providing sector: -201,000 small business jobs

The Report's data is taken from a sample of 400,000 payrolls, covering 24 million employees in all major private industries and regions. Of course they do this as a service to help sell their payroll solutions, nothing wrong with that.

My payroll is pretty simple and only requires a pen and my checkbook. The largest member of my payroll, after me, is the federal government, followed by the state government. Sometimes, I think I am falling behind my other "employees" in wages. Now if the paychecks I write go to help other Americans get jobs, especially to reverse the numbers in the small business sector, I will feel much better about these other two employees I have, especially since I cannot fire them. I am not being partisan in my politics here as I hope that both parties find the wisdom to put my paychecks toward generating real work.