SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Thumbtack.com has released its first monthly update from the Thumbtack Small Business Sentiment Survey, a new analysis developed with economists at Bloomberg that captures the economic sentiment of roughly 3,500 respondents in Ohio on a scale of 1 to 100.

Highlights of the May data include:

• Ohio’s small businesses have ranked as high as 15th nationally, but fell several spots in May after a slowdown last month.

• Small businesses in the Midwest are feeling better than the national average, but Ohio fell behind the regional average in May.

• Despite the slowdown in May, Ohio small businesses continue to report more hiring than in other states, ranking 13th nationally.

• While Ohio is a national leader on some fronts, the state’s small businesses remain more conservative in their inflation expectations.

• Ohio’s small businesses had been particularly optimistic about future hiring, ranking in the top 10 in April before falling more than a dozen spots in May.

The U.S. Economic Census shows that over 90 percent of small businesses in the United States have five employees or fewer. Via its network of more than 150,000 active service professionals, Thumbtack has the capability to regularly survey this otherwise difficult-to-reach population.

“We are excited to be able to share this new survey, which will capture the sentiment of thousands of small businesses nationwide on a monthly basis,” said Jon Lieber, chief economist of Thumbtack. “Many of these business owners have few or no employees, and are often overlooked in other widely-tracked business surveys. We hope to offer new insights and a better understanding into what’s happening in this critical segment of the nation’s workforce and the American economy.”

The full results for Ohio can be seen at www.thumtack.com.

Thumbtack.com has surveyed tens of thousands of small businesses quarterly since December 2012. The survey asked questions about how small businesses are feeling about the general economic environment and health of their business, such as:

How would you rate your company’s financial situation today?

Have you attempted to fill any part-time or full-time positions over the past three months?

How do you expect the prices you charge to your clients or customers to change over the next three months?

Thumbtack.com and Bloomberg then used the survey responses to create a weighted index that demonstrates small business economic sentiment in one easy-to-understand number between 0 and 100 — an index score above 50 means sentiment is positive; an index score below 46 means sentiment is negative. Beginning in March, 2015, Thumbtack began collecting results monthly for this new survey. Survey results will be released monthly going forward.

For information, email [email protected].