Three Small-Business Data Sets Are Sending Different Hiring Signals

Research & Data

Three private small-business reports published in recent weeks seem to disagree. Homebase says small-business hiring turned positive year over year in September. Paychex says small-business employment is steady. QuickBooks estimates that the smallest employers lost jobs in August.

They are not necessarily contradicting each other. Each report observes a different set of employers, in a different month, using a different measure. Read carefully, they describe a small-business labor market that is mostly holding steady to slightly weaker, with one early sign of improvement in hiring among hourly employers.

What each report says

Homebase. In its September Main Street Health Report, Homebase said jobs added at businesses on its platform were 0.1% higher than a year earlier, the first positive year-over-year hiring reading since November 2024. But the number of employees working was down 3.7% from a year earlier and hours worked were down about 3%. Homebase described the data as evidence that hiring “may be stabilizing.”

Paychex. The Paychex Small Business Employment Watch, released September 29, put its jobs index for businesses with fewer than 50 employees at 99.15 in September, up 0.02 percentage points from August and close to its 2026 year-to-date average of 99.19. Paychex described small-business employment as remaining “steady.” Its index is scaled so that 100 means no change from a year earlier, so a reading just below 100 means employment at the same group of businesses is slightly lower than a year ago.

QuickBooks. The Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index published September 1 estimated that U.S. businesses with one to nine employees lost 11,100 jobs in August, a 0.09% decline from July. Employment fell in 11 of the 12 sectors and all eight regions it tracks. Its October release, covering September, has not yet been published.

Why the reports are not measuring the same thing

Homebase

• Employers covered: More than 100,000 businesses and about 2 million hourly employees on its scheduling, timekeeping and payroll platform
• Latest month: September
• Headline measure: Jobs added to employee rosters (a hiring flow)
• Comparison: Year over year

Paychex

• Employers covered: About 350,000 Paychex clients with fewer than 50 employees
• Latest month: September
• Headline measure: Same-store employment index
• Comparison: Level vs. a year earlier (100 = no change)

QuickBooks

• Employers covered: Businesses with 1 to 9 employees, modeled from about 420,000 QuickBooks Online Payroll users and calibrated to official statistics
• Latest month: August
• Headline measure: Estimated total employment
• Comparison: Month over month

Three differences matter most.

Size band and customer base. QuickBooks targets microbusinesses with one to nine employees. Paychex covers firms with fewer than 50. Homebase reflects its own customers, which are hourly Main Street employers. Each is a customer population, not a random sample of all U.S. small businesses.

Flows versus levels. Homebase’s positive headline is a hiring flow: how many jobs were added to rosters. Paychex and QuickBooks measure how many people are employed. A business can add more workers than a year ago while total headcount still falls, if more people leave. Homebase’s own data show exactly that: hiring up 0.1%, turnover up 6.5% and employees working down 3.7%.

Timing and construction. QuickBooks’ latest estimate is for August, a month earlier than the other two. Paychex compares the same businesses over 12 months. QuickBooks uses statistical models developed with outside economists to estimate the wider small-business population. Homebase defines its month as the 28th of the prior month to the 27th of the current one.

Do not average the numbers

Averaging these series would produce a number that describes no actual group of employers. It would mix a hiring rate with an employment level, a monthly change with an annual one, and August with September.

The better approach is to compare like with like. On employment levels, all three point the same way: Homebase’s employees working are down from a year earlier, Paychex’s index is just below the no-change line, and QuickBooks estimates a small monthly decline among microbusinesses. The one genuinely positive signal is narrower: hiring activity among Homebase’s hourly employers is no longer running below last year.

That distinction also separates these reports from the ADP National Employment Report released September 30, which estimated net job gains at private establishments with fewer than 50 workers. ADP uses yet another payroll population and definition, and its figures belong in that context rather than alongside these three.

What to watch

The signal to look for is convergence. If Homebase hiring stays positive and its employees-working measure stops falling, while Paychex’s index moves back toward 100 and QuickBooks’ September estimate stops declining, the small-business labor market would be turning on several independent measures at once. If Homebase’s hiring gain fades, September will look like a single favorable comparison.

When credible datasets disagree, the disagreement is useful information. Here it suggests that hourly Main Street employers in Homebase’s data are hiring at a slightly better pace than a year ago even as turnover rises, while small-business headcount overall is not yet growing.

Sources

• Homebase, Main Street Health Report — September 2026. https://www.joinhomebase.com/data/september-2026-main-street-health-report
• Paychex, “U.S. Small Business Employment Rate Remains Steady in September,” Small Business Employment Watch, September 29, 2026. https://www.paychex.com/newsroom/news-releases/small-business-employment-watch-september-2026
• Paychex Small Business Employment Watch methodology. https://www.paychex.com/employment-watch/
• Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index, September 2026 (August data), published September 1, 2026. https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/index/september-2026/

Featured photo: Storefronts on Main Street in Gibsonburg, Ohio, including a bakery established in 1922, photographed in 2022. Representative image of small businesses; the shops shown are not identified as customers of any company named in this article. Photo: w_lemay, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). Cropped from the original.