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Planning on working for a small business?Get out of town, or more exactly, get out of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton Metropolitan Statistical Area, rated the third worst place to work for the proverbial mom and pop company among the nation&#8217;s 100 largest MSAs.At least, that&#8217;s what WalletHub.com, the self-proclaimed &#8220;social network for your wallet,&#8221; decided after looking at data that included the number of businesses with fewer than 250 employees per 1,000 residents, the percentage of those business offering employee health insurance, employee earnings and average hours worked, among other things.WalletHub routinely gathers data from multiple public sources &#8212; this study included info from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Foundation and the United States Conference of Mayors, among others &#8212; and devises a formula using that data to rank states or metro areas.In justifying it&#8217;s latest rankings, WalletHub cited studies that say small businesses make up 99.7 percent of all U.S. employer firms, employ nearly 49 percent of the private workforce, and pay about 32 percent of the private payroll.But, the website says, &#8220;with no shortage of commentary on the best cities to start a small business, we turned the tables and asked which cities are best to work for one.&#8221;Turns out the answer to &#8220;best&#8221; was the Charlotte/Concord/Gastonia MSA straddling the two Carolinas. Worst was the Youngstown/Warren/Boardman MSA shared by Ohio and Pennsylvania.But Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton MSA wasn&#8217;t too far behind &#8212; or more exactly, too far ahead &#8212; of Youngstown. In fact, a breakdown of WalletHub&#8217;s scoring system shows the local area was worse in one of two broad categories, scoring at the bottom of the list of 100 for &#8220;economic environment.&#8221; Youngstown, by comparison, scored 95th.That category is calculated using five data points, and this region fared poorly in all: Median annual Income ($49,954, 65th among 100 MSAs), unemployment rate (7 percent, 88th place), well-being index (93, 84th place), Average number of hours worked by small business employees (35.5, 84th place) and projected population growth to 2042, 2.6 percent, 92nd place).The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton area fared a bit better in the second broad category of &#8220;small business environment, ranking 84th among the 100 MSAs reviewed.That category was derived using six statistics: Number of small businesses per 1,000 residents, growth in number of small businesses, net small business job growth (jobs gained/lost per number employed), variety of industries, percentage of small businesses offering health insurance coverage and earnings for small business employees,Of those the local MSA ranked highest among the 100 in the percentage of small businesses offering health insurance to employees: 37.7 percent, for 30th place.Full rankings are available at http://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-to-work-for-a-small-business/3768/#methodology

Study ranks NEPA region as 3rd worst in nation for small business employees