U.S. lost 104,000 businesses in first year of recession

Sunday, August 08, 2010, 9:01 AM

104,000: The net loss of U.S. businesses with paid employees from 2007 to 2008, according to the recent release of County Business Patterns from the Census Bureau. The total number of businesses with employees, which excludes sole proprietors and government workers, dropped to 7.6 million during that period. The first full year of the recession was 2008. The same data for 2009 are not yet available.

4: Ohio's rank for the percentage of businesses with employees that were lost from 2007 to 2008, with a decline of 2.4 percent to 263,761. Ohio's percentage loss was lower than only those in Florida (3.1 percent), Michigan (2.6 percent) and Idaho (2.5 percent).

2: Cuyahoga County's rank among the 50 largest U.S. counties for the percentage of businesses lost, dropping 3.2 percent to 34,908. The only place with a bigger drop was Broward County, Fla., north of Miami, at 3.3 percent. Two other Florida counties -- Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, at 3.1 percent, and Palm Beach County, at 2.9 percent -- ranked right behind Cuyahoga.

3: States where the number of businesses increased -- by 0.1 percent in Wyoming, 0.2 percent in Texas and 0.2 percent in North Dakota. Additionally, the number of businesses was up 0.4 percent in the District of Columbia.

9: Counties out of the largest 50 in the country in which the number of businesses increased, led by Kings County (Brooklyn), N.Y., at 2 percent; Philadelphia County, Pa., 1.4 percent; and Travis County (Austin area), Texas, 1.4 percent.


http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2010/08/us_lost_104000_businesses_in_f.html

Full Circle Bldg Corp., my small general contrcting business is now defunct. After a 16 year run.

and there are damn few left to close.

Michigan and Ohio suffered horribly from NAFTA.

Don't think either state has yet to see a "recovery" of any kind for a decade.

which killed tourism and business travel, and one by one the pins went down. NAFTA probably kicked in at the same time...I wasn't affected by it, so I didn't notice.