I need to know for the United States only, the thirty or forty year
trends (or longer) in the settings in which people work.  I need to
know something very specific:
-- trends in the percentage of workers -- private sector only -- who
work in large corporations as opposed to other settings, especially
small business.  Ideally the data would be divided by size of employer
such as 10 or fewer employees, 11 - 50 employees, 51 - 500 employees,
501 - 2000 employees, more than 2000 employees -- or another statistic
like that.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 21 May 2003 13:31 PDT

The data I have found only covers the period from 1988-2000, and
reports the number of firms and the number of employees in each size
category for private industry:

0-4 employees
5-9
10-19 
<20 
20-99 
100-499 
<500 
and
500+

I am not aware of such data having been compiled prior to 1988.

Let me know if this would meet your needs as an answer to your
question.

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Clarification of Question by hmc53142-ga on 21 May 2003 14:25 PDT

I really need data from earlier periods than that, back through the
70's if possible.  I'm pretty sure there is such data, probably in the
Census of Commerce data.  Also, the official designation of "small
business" is 500 or fewer employees.  But there is probably some
private materials from the Conference Board or other big business
organization that would have data for larger firms, say 501-2000, 2001
and larger, or similar breakdown.

I forsee several problems with getting accurcy. Large businesses have
been swallowing up smaller businesses for at least 50 years, so my
guess is the percentage employed by big corporations has increased
significately and steadily, if you ignore the large increase in
government employees, unlicensed businesses = more or less ilegal and
not for profit corporations.
 You might check the SBA = Small Business (something) to see if they
claim a gain or loss in small bussiness employees nationwide. The
number of persons working two or more jobs has also increased and you
did not say how we should figure part time and self employed persons.
The number employed by big corporations may be more meaningful than
the percentage compared to 'who can be quite sure what'?  Neil