In 2006, more than 20.7 million U.S. businesses without a payroll had a total revenue of more than $970 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today.

     These results are published in Nonemployer Statistics: 2006, an annual report on businesses without paid employees classified in nearly 300 industries for the nation, states, counties and metropolitan areas. The report has data on 18.2 million sole proprietorships, 1.4 million corporations and 1.2 million partnerships, which together comprise the total number of nonemployer businesses.

     Three economic sectors accounted for almost half of all nonemployer business receipts: real estate and rental and leasing ($193 billion); construction ($159 billion); and professional, scientific and technical services ($124 billion). About 7.9 million businesses were in these three sectors, representing nearly 38 percent of all nonemployer businesses.

     The child day care services industry reported 683,861 nonemployer businesses in 2006, with receipts totaling almost $8.5 billion. Los Angeles County, Calif. (32,762), Cook County, Ill. (24,293), and Bronx County, N.Y. (18,939), had the most nonemployer child day care businesses, accounting for 11 percent of the businesses and 10 percent of the receipts in this industry. Of the larger counties in this industry, Norfolk, Mass. ($25,409), Middlesex, Mass. ($24,791), and Palm Beach, Fla. ($24,707), were among those with the highest receipts per establishment.

     Taxi and limousine service also reported a large number of nonemployer businesses. Four of the five top counties in this industry were in the New York City area: Queens, Kings, Bronx and New York. There were 43,530 nonemployer taxi and limousine businesses in these counties, 29 percent of the 151,567 reported nationwide, and 84 percent of the 51,525 reported in New York state.

     Other highlights:

• California (2.6 million), Texas (1.7 million) and Florida (1.5 million) had the most nonemployer businesses, making up more than 28 percent of all nonemployers nationwide. These states made up more than 31 percent of all receipts from nonemployer businesses.
• Nationally, nonemployer businesses reported average receipts per location of $46,724. However, nonemployer businesses in Connecticut ($60,455), Nevada ($58,404) and New Jersey ($55,628) reported average receipts per businesses higher than the national average.

Editor's note: Nonemployer Statistics excludes businesses with paid employees; these data are covered in the County Business Patterns report. Nonemployer statistics originate from tax return information of the Internal Revenue Service. The data are subject to nonsampling error such as errors of self-classification by industry on tax forms, as well as errors of response, nonreporting and coverage. Values provided by each firm are slightly modified to protect the respondent's confidentiality. Further information about methodology and data limitations is available at <http://www.census.gov/epcd/nonemployer/view/covmeth.htm>.