Ok. Right. Private companies do not report their earnings to the SEC, so the only data the SEC has to go on to generate these graphs is by publicly traded companies.

So that's less than 4,000 companies, if you take the total number of companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ.

There are 30 million companies registered in the USA.

~22 million of those are sole proprietorships.

That leaves 8 million companies with 2 or more employees. That means payroll, accounting, etc. Going from sole prop to having employees is a HUGE leap, that incurs enormous costs and is not undertaken lightly.

So cut that number in half just to cut out the outliers, and you get 4 million companies that have more than one employee, have payroll, corporate taxes, etc.

Today, I expect the 4000 listed public companies are worth a large portion of the GDP. But it doesn't take a large increase in sales for 4 million companies to have a major impact on the GDP. And that impact isn't being measured effectively today... so where is the tipping point?

Cargill ($120b), Koch Industries ($115b), State Farm ($71b), Albertsons ($58b), Mars ($33b), Publix ($32b), and several other private companies are already making big, significant, needle-moving money, and not reporting it to the SEC....

I wonder where that tipping point is? When does private business become a significant measure, and how do we measure it? As markets move away from the big boxes to more local providers, this could really affect these types of graphs.