For US businesses, I would like the distribution of businesses, by
number of employees and by annual revenue.  So I could find out how
many businesses have more than 1000 employees, or how many have less
than $10M in revenue.  I would like to be able to answer questions of
this general type, not just these two sample questions!

Hello.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has compiled the sort of data
that you seek at:

U.S. SBA:
Statistics of U.S. Businesses and Nonemployer Statistics
http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/data.html
Similar data at:
U.S. Census Bureau: Statistics of U.S. Businesses
http://www.census.gov/csd/susb/susb.htm

Specifically, you'll find a breakdown of U.S. business size in terms
of number of employees at:
U.S. - All industries  by Employment Size of Enterprise 
http://www.census.gov/epcd/susb/2001/us/US--.HTM#table0

You'll also find a breakdown of U.S. business size in terms of revenue
(receipts) at:
http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/us_rec97.pdf
(This document is in PDF format, so the Adobe Acrobat Reader is
required. If you don't have that, visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html )

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search strategy:
"U.S. Businesses " statistics

Please "request clarification" if anything is unclear.  Thanks.

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Request for Answer Clarification by fwscholl-ga on 27 Jul 2004 08:41 PDT

This is good, but does not cover results for large business.  For
example, the data show howmany firms have more than $100M in revenue. 
But there is a big gap between $100M and WALMART at over $100B.  Are
there other statistics that also include the range of large firms?

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Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 27 Jul 2004 09:42 PDT

When you're talking about really big companies, nearly all of them are
publicly traded, so you could use the stock screener at Yahoo Finance:
http://screen.yahoo.com/stocks.html

Use the "Sales Revenue" minimum and maximum to screen for the figures
that you want:

For example, if you want companies with sales revenues of greater than
$100 billion (i.e., the Wal-Marts of the world), there are only 14:
http://screen.yahoo.com/b?sc=&im=&prmin=&prmax=&avmin=&avmax=&mcmin=&mcmax=&dvymin=&dvymax=&roy=&betamin=&betamax=&remin=100000000000&remax=&pmmin=&pmmax=&pemin=&pemax=&pbmin=&pbmax=&psmin=&psmax=&pegmin=&pegmax=&gr=&grfy=&ar=&vw=1&db=stocks

Or $10 billion to $100 billion, you'll see 315 companies:
http://screen.yahoo.com/b?sc=&im=&prmin=&prmax=&avmin=&avmax=&mcmin=&mcmax=&dvymin=&dvymax=&roy=&betamin=&betamax=&remin=10000000000&remax=100000000000&pmmin=&pmmax=&pemin=&pemax=&pbmin=&pbmax=&psmin=&psmax=&pegmin=&pegmax=&gr=&grfy=&ar=&vw=1&db=stocks

Very quick and good response