The Miami area saw a loss of 3,245 small businesses, or 59 establishments per 100,000 people. Many of them are related to the burst housing bubble. Nearly one quarter of the companies that shut down were small construction firms. And related industries, like real estate and financial services, were also hard hit as a result.
But, despite such losses, Robert D. Cruz, Ph.D., the chief economist for the Miami-Dade County Office of Economic Development and International Trade, said that the Miami area isn't uniquely troubled. ''The declines experienced from 2006 to 2008 are more reflective of the general state of the economy...rather than a structural economic problem unique to South Florida,'' he said.
Conditions have been improving in the area. The tourism industry has been on the upswing, and the area's housing market has seen large increases in the volume of sales in the first quarter of 2011, thanks largely to an influx of foreign buyers and relatively good values.
That was the most recent available data. This gallery uses rankings for establishments with one to nine employees. Supplemental data comes from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment & Wages and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
A low loan failure rate is a vote of confidence both for the franchise business model -- or concept -- and for the people involved. The following franchises all had relatively low loan failure rates.
