Saskatchewan’s commercial sector is all about small business.
The provincial government has prepared a profile of Saskatchewan’s commercial sector to mark Small Business Week, a celebration of entrepreneurship that is marked every October.
What they found is that nearly 99-percent of all the businesses in this province are considered small – in other words, firms with fewer than 50 employees. They break that down a bit further to identify what they call micro-businesses, those outfits with one to four workers. On the big business front, by contrast, we have fewer than 100 of these, about half a percentage point of the overall Saskatchewan business universe.
They also looked at it on a per capita basis which showed we have one small business for every 124 residents. With almost 157,000 entities, that is the second-highest concentration of small businesses per capita.
Saskatoon accounts for more than a quarter of all small businesses in the province. Regina has about 17-percent while Prince Albert and Moose Jaw each represent about 2.5-percent. And almost half of small business generate less than $100,000 a year in revenues.
— For more than 50 years, Paul Martin has specialized in coverage of the business and political scenes. His career has spanned radio, television and print and electronic media.
