QuickBooks Small Business Index: Hiring and Jobs Data Explained
Intuit's QuickBooks Small Business Index turns anonymized payroll data into monthly insight on small business hiring and employment trends.
Intuit has launched the QuickBooks Small Business Index, a public data tool that tracks hiring and employment across the small business economy. It is built on aggregated, anonymized QuickBooks Online Payroll records, which lets it read the sector faster than official jobs reports can. Here is what it covers, where the numbers come from, and how to put them to work.
What does the index measure?
According to Intuit, the index publishes monthly readings on small business employment, hiring activity, and hours worked. The lens is on very small firms, the part of the economy that official statistics tend to capture unevenly. At launch it covers the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with figures reported for each country.
Where does the data come from?
The index draws on a large pool of QuickBooks Online Payroll records. Intuit says the data is anonymized and aggregated before analysis, then weighted so the sample reflects the broader small business population. The company also says academic economists helped design the methodology, and that the methods are published alongside the results.
The gap in official jobs data
Official employment reports arrive with a lag, and the smallest employers are hard to measure through traditional surveys. Payroll records exist the moment payroll is run, so a payroll-based index can move much closer to real time. That freshness is the whole pitch. Treat it as one signal among several, not a replacement for official statistics.
Is your payroll data exposed?
Intuit says no individual business can be identified in the published figures. Records are pooled and stripped of identifying details before analysis, and the outputs are economy-wide rates rather than company-level numbers. If you use QuickBooks Online Payroll, your data helps shape the pool, but nothing in the results points back to you.
Putting the index to work
Owners can benchmark their own hiring and hours against the monthly trend. Accountants can bring the release into client conversations about staffing plans and wage budgets. We suggest one simple habit: when each monthly update is published, read it beside your own payroll reports and note where your numbers diverge.