10 industries where the smallest businesses pay the highest wages

It doesn't take a big company to deliver a big paycheck. While people can command a lot of money at top roles at global businesses that have a household name, smaller companies are often paying non-executives more in certain industries.

The nation's 33.2 million small businesses employ 67.1 million workers, accounting for nearly half (46.4%) of private sector jobs, according to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. From 1995 to 2021, businesses with fewer than 500 workers created 62.7% of new jobs—and those jobs pay competitive wages.

Next Insurance identified industries where small businesses paid the highest wages, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The analysis found that small businesses often pay more than their larger counterparts within the same industry for the same or equivalent positions—and not necessarily for jobs in the tech field. And the amounts by which the smaller firms exceed their bigger competitors' pay is not always small: It can amount to hundreds of dollars per week.

This analysis identified the 10 industries where companies with fewer than five employees were the highest-paying. The list was ranked by the pay difference between these small companies and the largest companies within the same industry.

In all cases but one, companies with 1,000 or more employees were the largest size classified by the BLS. The exception was merchant wholesalers of nondurable goods (which include paper, food service products, and other disposable items), for which the largest grouping was 250 to 499 employees based on available data.

Only the 84 industries that had data for companies with fewer than five employees were considered. The industries that the BLS labeled as "unclassified" were excluded, as well as the rail transportation industry due to limited data. Read on to see which types of small companies pay the most.