Here are a few interesting facts about businesses and the economy in the US. All information has been gathered from Forbes, Fox Business, Business Insider and the MBDA websites.

There are just under 28 million small businesses in the US, and 22 million self employed with no additional employees.

Over half of the US population work in small businesses.

The overall debt in the US is over $56 trillion.

There was a 10% drop in global economic activity originating from the US between 2001 and 2011.

Although the US population has more than doubled in size, there are currently fewer people working in manufacturing in the US than in the 1950s.

Unemployment in the US has risen from around 20% in the 1950s to over 35% today.

Almost half of all Americans share a household with somebody claiming benefits from government programmes.

Minority businesses in New York, Texas, California and Florida make up more than 55% of all minority owned businesses in the US.

70% of all new businesses survive the first two years.

Around 50% of these survive the first five years.

Around 25% new firms stay operating for fifteen or more years.

52% of all small businesses are run from home.

More data has been produced in the last two years than in the entire history of mankind.

AirBnB is valued at around $31billion which surpasses Marriott, Starwood and Wyndham.

Less than 0.5% of data is used or analysed.

The social security system has predicted a $134 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years. The number of Americans claiming benefits from Social Security Disability is larger than the population of Greece.

About 60% of all children in Detroit are living in what is defined as poverty.

Small businesses outnumber corporations in the US by 1162 to 1.

Small businesses also pay 44% of all US payroll.

It takes only 6 days to start a new business in the US. In New Zealand, it takes only 1, however in China is takes 38 days.

It costs $325 to start a business in the US, compared to $1571 in Saudi Arabia and surprisingly $2049 in India.

Around 12.5% of small business owners are immigrants in the US.

Small businesses create more than 13x more patents per an employee than larger corporations.

There are over 3.5 billion Google searches every day.

As of March 11th 2016, Google's price share represented an 855% growth over 12 years.

Alphabet inc is the world's most valuable public company, valued at $547.1billion on the 2nd February 2016.

May 2017 - Apple Inc. became the first U.S. company with a market value of more $800 billion.

Immigrants make up 13.5% of the US population, and generate $67 billion of the $577 billion business income, as estimated in the 2000 census.

The estimated cost of residing in San Francisco is $3632 a month which makes it the most expensive city for a single person to settle in. The majority of this is spent on housing with the median home price being $841,600, and a typical monthly mortgage repayment comes to $3684. There is even roughly a 37% increase on the price of fuel within the city.

By increasing international sales of US products, the US economy is able to life minimum wages and provide better benefits for employees working in the system. 95% of the world's population lives outside of the US, and so the potential is massive. More than 41 million US jobs rely on the trading industry and international trade boosts the potential spending power of each American household by around $10,000 every year. Around 98% of all businesses trading internationally are small companies, and so it is vital to the local economy.

Electrical machinery and computers are the US' largest exports, which combined account for over $3billion annually into the US economy and collectively make up almost a quarter of all exports. While the price of making electronic and computer equipment is falling and many large conglomerates are favouring the manufacturing processes abroad, it still plays a vital role in the economy of the US.

The fastest growing export economy was in Mineral fuels and oil, which increased by 72.4% over 7 years, starting in 2009. It now contributes $94.7billion to the economy. The international sales of cars wasn't far behind in economic growth, showing an improvement of 68.8%.

While exporting is vital to the economy, the US actually buys far more international products than it sells abroad. The US spends at least $50billion a month more on imports than it gains from exports, and the US imported $2.252trillion worth of goods in 2016.

The top exports actually seem to mirror the most popular imports, with electrical machinery and computers taking the top spots. The fastest growing import economy is vehicles, making up 12.7% of the market at $285billion. This has increased by 113.7% over the last seven years. This is followed by furniture and domestic goods, up by 94.5% in the same period.

There are a number of benefits to international trading. Firstly, some countries are better at making particular products, and some companies can make products for cheaper. On the other end of the scale, some products are worth more in some places than in others. This effectively allows people to optimise a profit by manufacturing a product in one place and by selling it elsewhere, and to save money by buying a product or raw materials from a place where they are cheaper. International trading creates a lot jobs in different roles, from transport to more administrative positions.

On top of the quality and the prices of products, there is also varying demand across the globe. Your product could be much more sought after in a foreign country, particularly if they can't manufacture or produce it themselves at all. This means its value increases, once more allowing you to potentially inflate your profit further. This really helps to improve the economy in developing countries which often have products that cannot be grown or manufactured in the US due to different climates. International trade has been the main source for economic growth in the 20th century. It helps to control the fluctuating prices of products within a country by providing competition and reduces dependancy on existing markets. Without the ability to trade globally, the economy would simply collapse.

In 1929 the US Stock Market suffered the biggest blow it has ever seen. It was the beginning of the great depression, and it wasn't until 2954 that the price of stocks had regained the same value as before. On what has become known as “Black Tuesday”, 13 million shares were traded, wiping out thousands of investors and losing billions of US dollars.

It's estimated that, at the time, around 60% of the population was living below the minimum wage that was predicted to be able to survive, and as the economy suffered such a large crash, the poorer families out of this percentage were not able to buy anything anymore, so therefore stopped purchasing products. This had the knock on effect of job losses in the factories and companies as there was no demand to increase production. Unemployment became a huge issue with an estimated 12,000 people being made unemployed every single day during the depression's peak and peaking at 24.9% of the total population. Wages decreased by 42%, economic growth slumped by 50% and worlds trade by a massive 65%. Over the course of the week, the economy lost $30billion, which today, with the price of inflation. would equate to over $377.5billion.

Other effects were that 1616 banks went bankrupt, 20,000 companies went bankrupt, and 23,000 people committed suicide in one year, which is the highest rate ever recorded. There was no support system for unemployment back then which forced people to extreme measure. Apparently, some people were starting forest fires to become fire fighters, and farmers would kill their animals to bypass the cost of keeping them as nobody was buying the meat, despite it being recorded that people were starving to death.

What we have learnt from all of this is that we need to regulate the economy. The crash was initiated by banks lending freely to speculators who inflicted the stock to heights that were just no sustainable - basically, share prices became much higher than what they were actually worth. Around 40% of all bank loaned money was being used to purchase shares as people saw it as a way of making money quickly, like the Gold Rush.

With a lack of government protection, when the economy crashed, there were no safety nets. Policy makers used the problems faced during The Great Depression period to build up regulations which are still used today, including bank deposit insurance and social security. Despite this, the economy also slumped in 2008 due to a de-regulatory fervour from the 80s and 90s, however without the regulations established from The Great Depression, things would have been considerably worse.

Although the stock markets crashed again in 1987, and suffered the largest economic decline in a single day, because of the lessons learned from The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression it wasn't so disastrous for the goal economy, and after only two years, market prices were restored. This shows us that regulation is effective, for when the economy collapses.

With an increasing trend in ethical and environmentally conscious investment and the knowledge of both the decreasing supply of fossil fuels and the pollution they exert, the pressure is on and constantly augmenting for greener energy sources. One of the fastest growing energy sources in the world is wind power, gained through the use of wind turbines which is a clean and renewable source.

Unlike other energy plants, turbines can be set up in locations without a water source. Most other energy sources require water for either turning the turbines or for cooling, and in places like California which often suffer from water shortages and drought, this can be problematic.

Wind energy is an endless supply, for as long as we have the sun to heat up the earth there will always be wind. The turbines are cost effective to set up, and can be built on land already being used for farming as they only take up a small amount of space and the rest of the land is left unharmed. This can provide an additional income for landowners.

Wind power is also a very fast growing economy, arguably the fastest in the US. It has the potential to create 600,000 new jobs by 2050 and is expected to grow 108% in the next ten years. It is estimated that by 2030, a quarter of Europe will be powered by wind energy with and estimated €474 billion of cumulative investment in new assets.

Wind power, while decreasing in price, is expensive to initially set up. In areas without much wind it may not prove to be cost effective, and often it may be cheaper to install traditional reactors and power plants. Because a few people don't like to look at the turbines and because most windy areas tend to be far away from the cities, turbines are often set up far from the places which they are powering, which then requires longer electricity lines to be built to accomodate them, although this does revitalise rural economies. Some people also complain about the low ‘hum' sound that some old ones omit but people who understand the clean energy side see the beauty in them.

There is also a level of concern over damage to migrating birds who often use the wind to navigate, although turbines have a lower impact on the environment than most other sources of electricity.

A wind turbine is an intermittent source of electricity as it can only produce power about 30% of the time, and not necessarily when needed.

With more companies looking to trade ethically and an increasing interest in ESG investments, the exigency for wind power the market makes it a very valuable resource. Over the last twenty years, the cost of generating wind power has dropped more than 80%. When turbines were first set up in the 80's, wind power could cost as much as 30c per a kilowatt hour. This has now dropped to as little as 2c. The typical lifespan of a wind farm is 20 years, and there is extensive research on how to extend this even further.