The Contribution of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses to Gross Domestic Product : A Canada-United States Comparison

Adopting the methodology used to produce estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) by size for the United States, this paper estimates GDP for small and medium-sized businesses versus large businesses for the Canadian non-agricultural business sector in 2005. In the entire non-agricultural business sector, small and medium-sized businesses with less than 500 employees account for 54.2% of GDP in Canada and for 50.7% of GDP in the United States. When two industries with heavy government ownership in Canada (health and education) are excluded, the results are 52.9% and 50.3%, respectively