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Nationwide in 2005, hiring by small businesses grew only 0.3 %, compared to 4.4% in 2004, as reported by Illinois firm SurePayroll in its annual Small Business Scorecard survey.
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Coupled with a decline in salaries of small business workers, the lack of growth led SurePayroll President Michael Alter to say, "Small businesses appear to have transitioned from being recovery leaders to recovery laggards."

While Arizona bucked the national trend, ranking third in growth at 6.3 percent for the year, it also made the list of the top 10 states where salaries fell the most. The full set of data is available online at surepayroll.com/scorecard.

Copyright © 2006. Arizona Daily Star.