There are over 30 million firms in the U.S., of which about 5.8 million are corporations. A mere 35,000 of these corporations have annual sales of over $50 million, and this relative handful of corporations, commonly thought of as "big business", account for over 80% of total corporate profits in this country. Are those millions of other corporations, sole proprietorships, and partnerships outside of big business fairly insignificant to the U.S. economy then? If not, then what is the importance of these smaller companies to the national economy?