
Number of Firms by Employment Size of the Enterprise - michael_nielsen
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/datasets/number-of-firms-by-employment-size-o/versions/1
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showerst
Here's a cleaned up data set that graphs properly:
[http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/datasets/number-...](http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/datasets/number-
of-firms-by-employment-size-o-2/versions/1)

and Here's a visualization using the time-treemap to compare sector growth:
[http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/t...](http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/treemap-
of-proportion-of-us-firms-by)

and here's a stacked area graph that shows it all at once, although it's not
as nice for comparison purposes:
[http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/u...](http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/us-
employment-by-firm-size-1988-2006)

~~~
ejain
The stacked area graph is perfect -- if you check the "% of items shown"
option:
[http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/e...](http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/e6c1b12ece4211ddaed4000255111976/comments/f5cc78a4ce5911ddaed4000255111976)

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michael_nielsen
These statistics are relevant to Paul Graham's recent essay. They show that
the number of firms with large numbers of employees is growing faster than the
number with small numbers of employees. The years covered by the data are
1988-2001; it would be better to have more recent data, and also to have data
broken down by field. It's possible that the US Census Office (which is the
source of these data) has more recent figures, but I haven't checked.

With these limitations understood, the data here still contradict the essay's
assumption that there is a trend toward smaller companies.

~~~
ejain
The data includes 1988-2006. Many-Eyes is just trying to hide the data (click
"view as text")...

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showerst
Shame that this seems to confuse many-eyes' visualizations. This would be
perfect for their time-treemap, if it could pivot the data correctly.

Edit: Looks like the numbers were just uploaded in a non-standard way, i'm
going to remove the ticks and reupload

~~~
ejain
Thanks. I had submitted a bug report, but didn't realize that it was the ticks
that were causing the trouble. They may want to fix that anyway though...

