by Calculated Risk on 3/04/2012 01:17:00 PM

From Reuters: 45,000 Jobs Added By Small Businesses in US

U.S. small businesses added 45,000 employees in February and offered workers more money even as working hours were little changed ... payrolls processing firm Intuit said.

January's small business employment had previously been reported to have increased 50,000.

The Intuit survey is based on responses from about 72,000 small businesses with fewer than 20 employees that use the Intuit Online Payroll system.

Graphs for the Intuit Small Business index are here.

Note: This is based on Intuit users, however, as Intuit notes: "Employment for Intuit Online Payroll customers is growing much faster than employment at the average small business." Another small business report, the monthly NFIB survey, has shown much slower growth for small businesses. But the NFIB survey has a very large percentage of real estate related small businesses - and that probably accounts for a large portion of the difference.

The BLS will report on Friday, and the consensus is for an increase of 204,000 non-farm payroll jobs in February.