[Excerpt] This issue of Beyond the Numbers compares health benefits data from private sector employers, showing variation between the smallest (those employing 1–49 workers) and the largest (those employing 500 workers or more) establishments in March 2012. Over 95 percent of the nearly 8.7 million private sector business establishments in the United States employed fewer than 50 workers in the first quarter of 2011; these establishments employed 47.3 million workers (45 percent of all private industry employment). In contrast, there were slightly fewer than 15,000 private establishments that employed 500 workers or more; less than half of 1 percent of all private workplaces. These largest establishments employed about 17.5 million workers.