"Most of the country's businesses are microbusinesses, but it never even occurs to them to turn to us to solve their problems," said Ms. Baker.

Ms. Baker complained to an audience of microenterprise development professionals attending the Mid-Atlantic Regional Training Conference in Frederick, Maryland that policy- makers and mainstream media alike habitually ignore the broad economic contributions of the nation's microbusinesses.

"If the folks in Washington are worried about job creation, why don't they turn to non- employer businesses?" Ms. Baker asked during her remarks. "There are 17 million non- employer businesses in this country. If only half of them created just one job -- that would be eight and a half million new jobs, wouldn't it?"

Microbusinesses, small firms which employ fewer than 5 workers and typically require less than $35,000 in initial capitalization, routinely earn revenues that average less than $50,000 per year. Typically, the owners of these businesses are interested in limiting the growth of their firms to keep them manageable on limited resources and personnel.

Policy makers tend to ignore them because, individually, these microbusinesses earn so little. But there are a lot of them. Ninety percent of all U.S. businesses are microbusinesses. These very small firms operate in every sector of the economy, from retail to manufacturing, giving them the collective potential to significantly impact the U.S. economy.

In addition, business and workplace trends are pointing to an increased importance of the microbusiness in the overall U.S. economic picture. In the last 25 years, self-employment has grown by almost 300%, fueled by waning employee loyalty and growing worker dissatisfaction. With company size declining across the board, the Information Economy is looking increasingly like the Age of Small.

"The time has come for microentrepreneurs, and the people who work with them, to come out of hiding," Ms. Baker said in her speech. "We can't let them ignore us anymore. It's time for us to stand up and make some noise."

DAWN RIVERS BAKER is the president and CEO of Wahmpreneur Publishing, Inc. (WPI), publisher of information products for microbusinesses. She is an award-winning journalist and publisher of the online newsletter The MicroEnterprise Journal, the nation's only news and policy publication devoted to analyzing the issues as they effect the smallest of small businesses.

On the Internet:

Wahmpreneur Publishing, Inc. — http://www.wahmpreneur.com
The MicroEnterprise Journal — http://www.microenterprisejournal.com