On Mar 24, 2009, at 5:19 PM, SA wrote:
> Yeah, I'd like to know too. It's often easy to overlook how small
> the "visible" publicly-traded universe of companies is relative to
> the total economy. There are about 6,400 companies in the Wilshire
> 5000 and I think about 10,000 in Compustat, and many of these aren't
> what you'd call real companies. But in total there are more than 5
> million firms in the US. In 2002 there were almost 17,000 firms with
> more than 500 employees. Probably well under half the workforce
> works for a listed company.
But man, do they ever account for a disproportionate share of output.