This is small business week in Saskatchewan. It is a 50-year-old tradition designed to recognize the contribution start-ups and smaller enterprises make to building the local economy.
And it is a big contribution in a province like Saskatchewan where virtually every business is a small one.
It is a truism that even the biggest businesses started out small and grew over time, but for most enterprises, small is simply what they are and always will be in a marketplace with a relatively smaller consumer base at just 1.25 million people.
The latest figures from the province suggest that a breathtaking 99-percent of businesses in Saskatchewan would be classified as small. The threshold to break into the medium-sized category is 50 employees.
That translates into more than 150,000 enterprises that qualify as being small or 124 businesses for every 100,000 people, the second-highest density among all the provinces – evidence of the entrepreneurial spirit of Saskatchewan residents. This group also accounts for 30-percent of the overall workforce earning nearly $8 billion in wages and salaries.
