Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Get the answers to the most common questions people have about the Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index.

What is the Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index?

The Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index is a monthly measure of small business employment and hiring in the US, Canada, and the UK, developed with Professor Ufuk Akcigit and an international team of researchers and academics. The Index is published at the earliest opportunity each month. For a deeper dive into the monthly jobs numbers, read our quarterly and annual reports.

All publication dates are available here in the publication calendar.

What does the Index show?

In the US and Canada, the Index shows the how many people are currently employed by small businesses and the monthly growth rate. In the UK, the Index shows the total number of job vacancies at small businesses and the monthly growth rate. All data insights are available at the national, regional, and sector level. In the US, the Index also tracks small business employment in 20 states.

To create these estimates, the Index combines data from several different sources, using purpose-built economic models. These models normalize anonymized QuickBooks customer data against official government statistics to reflect the general population of small businesses in each country. The Index is not a reflection of Intuit’s business. This rigorous methodology expands Intuit’s ability to more clearly delineate between Intuit’s small business customers and the small business community at-large. It is a powerful new tool informing policy decisions that impact small businesses around the globe—shining a light on the critical value of small businesses to the overall health of the economy.

What is new and important about the Index?

The Index fills significant gaps in economic data. The number of small businesses, the jobs they create, and the innovations they bring make them vitally important to the economy—but up-to-date data on the current health of small businesses is scarce. If they are under- or misrepresented in economic data reports, they are less likely to get the support they need to succeed. This is why Intuit QuickBooks developed the Index.

The Index's robust methodology stands out from other reports in the market using official statistics for its calibration, focusing exclusively on small businesses, and eliminating publication delays. Unlike some small business indexes, it does not rely exclusively on survey data. Instead, anonymized QuickBooks Payroll records are aggregated and normalized against official government statistics before publication using purpose-built economic models developed by Professor Akcigit and his international team of independent economists. This means the Index can provide a near real-time reflection of hiring and employment in the small business economy—not on trends in the QuickBooks customer base—just a few days after small businesses run payroll.

How does the Index define a “small business”?

In the US and the UK, the Index tracks small businesses with 1 to 9 employees because this is the best match between Intuit QuickBooks data and official statistics provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Office for National Statistics. For the same reason, in Canada, the Index tracks small businesses with 1 to 19 employees—because this is the best match between Intuit QuickBooks data and official statistics provided by Statistics Canada.

In the US, these small businesses represent 77% of all employers and provide 12% of all jobs. In Canada, these small businesses represent 93% of all employers and provide 25% of all jobs. In the UK, these small businesses represent 82% of all employers and provide 19% of all jobs. Find out more in the 2023 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report.

What are the sample sizes used in the Index?

The Index sample sizes are large—especially in the US and Canada, where QuickBooks is a leading solution for small businesses. Sample sizes are likely to grow over time and may fluctuate because they are depend on businesses using the QuickBooks Payroll platform. The sample also requires statistical adjustment to ensure the Index truly reflects broad employment and job vacancy changes rather than trends only in the QuickBooks customer base. The monthly total is currently at least 424,000 small businesses:

• 333,000 small businesses in the US with 1 to 9 employees
• 66,000 small businesses in Canada with 1 to 19 employees
• 25,000 small businesses in the UK with 1 to 9 employees

What data sources does the Index use?

As noted above, the Index uses anonymized QuickBooks data to create aggregated data outputs which are normalized against official statistics to reflect the general population of small businesses in each country rather than the QuickBooks customer base. It has been designed to create a richer, more timely economic indicator than any that are currently available.

In addition to anonymized QuickBooks data, the following official data sources are used to ensure the Index is nationally representative of small business employment:

• In the US: Business Employment Dynamics and Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• In Canada: Labour Force Survey (source: Statistics Canada)
• In the UK: Job Vacancy Survey (source: Office for National Statistics) and Business Population Estimates (source: Department for Business and Trade)

What QuickBooks data is used?

The Index uses anonymized payroll data from QuickBooks customer accounts published in aggregated statistical compilations which have been normalized against official statistics to reflect the wider population of small businesses in each country. This, coupled with rigorous data privacy safeguards means individual businesses are never identified (more info on Intuit’s privacy practices can be found here).

The Index reflects the small business economy as a whole, not the performance of the QuickBooks customer base. By using anonymized data and then aggregating the data, the Index protects the privacy of QuickBooks customers. It reveals the latest small business employment and hiring trends at the national, sector, and regional levels.

How is the QuickBooks data collected? 

The first step begins with QuickBooks customers when they enter their data into their QuickBooks accounts each time they run payroll. Before it’s used in the Index, this data is anonymized, normalized against official statistics, and aggregated to create national, regional, or sector averages. By working with anonymous data and only publishing aggregated insights—which create average or median values across large samples of small businesses—it’s impossible to identify any individuals or individual businesses in the Index.

Are official statistics used in the Index?

Yes, official statistics are an essential component of the Index because they make it nationally representative of small business employment. To normalize the QuickBooks data so the Index reflects the broader population of small businesses rather than the QuickBooks customer base, the following external data sources are used in the Index’s economic models:

• US: Bureau of Labor Statistics Business Employment Dynamics (BED) and monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) 
• Canada: Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Surveys
• UK: Office of National Statistics monthly Vacancy Survey and the Department for Business and Trade's annual Business Population Estimates

Find out how these official data sources are used by reading the Index's complete methodology.

Where does the monthly Index data live?

The Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index lives here on the QuickBooks Blog. Use the links below to explore the data insights and the methodology behind them:

• Dashboard with interactive data visualizations—including heat maps and line charts—with data insights available by country, region, and sector. Aggregated data is be available to download for free, without subscription, directly from each chart that's published.
• Monthly posts published at the beginning of every month, with latest employment insights for small businesses in the US, Canada, and the UK. The dashboard is updated every time a new post is published.
• Quarterly reports published every January, April, July, and October with a deeper dive into regional and industry trends for Q1 (January to March), Q2 (April to June), Q3 (July to September), and Q4 (October to December) every year.
• Annual reports, published every fall with comprehensive analysis of small business employment trends and what's been driving them over the past 12 months.
• Methodology showing how the Index works, which data sources are used, and how the calculations are made to produce rigorous, reliable results every month.
• Publication calendar with future release dates for all monthly, quarterly, and annual publications as soon as these dates are confirmed. Dates may be subject to change without notice.
• About the team with biographies and headshots of Professor Akcigit and the team of economists who helped to develop the Index methodology and economic models.

How will the Index data insights be shared?

The Index hub is here on the QuickBooks blog. It has been publicized on Intuit's blog, in press releases, in media interviews and articles, at events, in speeches, in regular emails to policymakers and QuickBooks customers, in social media posts, and beyond to ensure the data insights are widely available.

Sign up to the Index mailing list using the form below.

Will the Index be gated or free to access without data collection?

The Index will be free to access for the foreseeable future without any subscription requirements or data collection. It’s intended as a resource for everyone to use.

How often is the Index updated?

The Index is updated monthly with new data insights published as early as possible each month—typically during the first week—just a few days after payrolls are completed, making it highly up-to-date. The updates are published in monthly blog posts in the US, Canada, and the UK. Every time a post is published, the main Index dashboard is also updated. The dashboard contains all data insights for each country, region, and sector.

The monthly Index is typically updated a few days earlier in the US and Canada than the UK. This is due to UK businesses generally having different payroll schedules to those in North America.

Get a full list of publication dates here.

Why did Intuit create the Index?

The Index shines a light on small businesses' critical importance to the short- and long-term health of the economy. For example, the 2023 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report shows that 98% of US employers are small businesses (with less than 100 employees), while in Canada and the UK, this rises to 99%.

By developing the Index, Intuit QuickBooks wants to help all small businesses grow and prosper by highlighting the challenges and opportunity they face. The Index helps to close critical gaps in economic data, providing reliable, up-to-date insights into their growth nationally, regionally, and by sector. Over the longer term, the Index's broader goal is to support economic growth by positively shaping government policy on small businesses’ behalf and by leading the discussion about small businesses in the media, on social media, and at high-profile events around the world. The Index has the potential to give everyone with an interest in the health of the small business economy—from small business owners to policy makers—the insights they need to make more informed decisions.

What is Intuit’s role in creating the Index?

Intuit provides the critical, unique small business data from hundreds of thousands of QuickBooks customers accounts that power the Index. Intuit also commissioned the development of the economic models developed by an independent team of economists led by Professor Ufuk Akcigit under strict privacy processes, guidelines, and procedures. These models normalize the QuickBooks data to ensure the Index is reflect the national small business economies of the US, Canada, and the UK, rather than the QuickBooks customer base. All data processing is done by Intuit analysts.

Who is Professor Ufuk Akcigit?

Ufuk Akcigit is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is an elected Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Center for Economic Studies, and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Koc University. Alongside a team of other leading economists, he developed the economic models that use QuickBooks data to create the monthly Index.

Read more about Professor Ufuk Akcigit.

What is Professor Akcigit’s role in creating the Index?

The Index has been developed in collaboration with Professor Ufuk Akcigit and an international team of independent economists. Together, they created purpose-built, proprietary economic models which power the Index to make it truly reflective of the current small business economy—with data insights available by country, region, and sector. Using these models, Intuit analysts process the data to create the monthly Index, published here on the QuickBooks blog.

Why did Intuit decide to collaborate with Professor Akcigit?

Professor Ufuk Akcigit is a leading economist specializing in small business innovation, entrepreneurship, macroeconomics, and firm dynamics—and is the winner of multiple awards and accolades. Intuit decided to collabrate with him because he shares our love for small businesses and our desire to help them succeed. The professor brings the international expertise and resources required to help Intuit launch a high-frequency small business index in the US, Canada, and UK.

How is this Index different to the previous Small Business Index that QuickBooks published until 2015?

Until 2015, Intuit published a previous instance of the Small Business Index updated monthly to show small business employment trends. The major differences between the new Index and the previous version are that the new Index covers the UK and Canada as well as the US and uses an updated methodology. This methodology was developed by a different team of economists to the previous Index, who were chosen for their expertise and familiarity with the economies of the US, Canada, and the UK.

How is this Index different to the other data insights QuickBooks shares related to customer trends?

The major difference between the Index and the other data insights Intuit QuickBooks shares related to customer trends is that the Index does not reflect the QuickBooks business because it uses purpose-built economic models to normalize the anonymized QuickBooks Payroll customer data against official statistics. This means the Index reflects the small business economy as a whole, not the QuickBooks customer base.

What is the methodology for the Index?

The Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index creates aggregated data outputs from anonymized QuickBooks customer payroll records which are calibrated using statistical methods to better reflect the general population of small businesses in each country, as represented by published official statistics. Statistical adjustment ensures the Index truly reflects employment and job vacancy changes rather than trends in the QuickBooks customer base.

Get the full methodology here.

How do the data sources differ between the countries?

All the non-QuickBooks data used to produce the Index comes from official government sources:

• The US employment and regional boundary data comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• The Canadian employment and regional boundary data comes from Statistics Canada. 
• The UK job vacancy and sector/industry classification data comes from the UK’s Office for National Statistics.
• For both the US and Canada, the Index uses the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to define the sectors and industries within them.
• For the UK, the Index uses the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) to define sectors and industries.

All anonymized QuickBooks data used to create the Index’s aggregated data insights has been entered by small businesses when they run their payroll to pay employees and related taxes. Derived from this, in combination with official statistics, are the number of employees per country, region, and industry, and monthly changes in employment. In the UK, unlike in the US and Canada, this data is used to predict job vacancies rather than employment because official employment statistics are not currently available to use as a benchmark, but job vacancy data is available.

Why do the total employment levels and growth rates sometimes differ?

The Index produces a monthly prediction of employment growth rates by country, region and sector. In order to translate these growth rates into the number of jobs/vacancies gained or lost, the growth rates are multiplied by the prior month’s predicted employment levels—except during the months when new official statistics are published. When this happens, the latest official employment levels that have been reported are used in the calculation instead of the Index’s prior month’s predicted employment levels. This ensure the Index uses the most up-to-date official statistics available.

Official statistics are an essential component of the Index because they make it nationally representative of small business employment. Whenever they are updated, this provides new information that wasn’t previously available, which is why the Index’s latest estimates for small business employment sometimes differ from older estimates. The latest estimates always provide the most accurate picture of small business employment or hiring because they include the most up-to-date data.

Official statistics are published at different frequencies depending on the country. For example, in the US, the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) are refreshed every 2 to 4 months while the official statistics used by the Index in Canada and the UK are refreshed every 1 to 2 months. The BED data is based on administrative data from unemployment insurance records, which have a 6 to 9 month time lag but are highly accurate. To maintain this accuracy, the BED is updated every 2 to 4 months to add new months of data and revise older data. When this new data is added, the Index is updated, creating new employment estimates which may be higher or lower than what was previously reported. By combining up-to-date data from QuickBooks Payroll accounts with these official statistics, the Index eliminates almost all of the time lag—providing a more current picture of the small business economy.

Disclaimer

This content is for information purposes only and should not be considered legal, accounting or tax advice, or a substitute for obtaining such advice specific to your business. Additional information and exceptions may apply. Applicable laws may vary by state or locality. No assurance is given that the information is comprehensive in its coverage or that it is suitable in dealing with a customer’s particular situation. Intuit Inc. does not have any responsibility for updating or revising any information presented herein. Accordingly, the information provided should not be relied upon as a substitute for independent research. Intuit Inc. does not warrant that the material contained herein will continue to be accurate nor that it is completely free of errors when published. Readers should verify statements before relying on them.

We provide third-party links as a convenience and for informational purposes only. Intuit does not endorse or approve these products and services, or the opinions of these corporations or organizations or individuals. Intuit accepts no responsibility for the accuracy, legality, or content on these sites.