Twenty-five numbers that explain American small business right now — how many there are, how long they last, what they pay for credit and how fast they are adopting AI. Every figure is traced to its original source.
small businesses in the U.S.
36.2M
of private-sector workers employed
45.9%
new business applications in 2025
5.67M
of new businesses survive year one
77.9%
Part I
The scale of small business
Start with the size of the thing. By the federal definition — an independent firm with fewer than 500 employees — almost every company in America is a small business, and most of them are far smaller than that ceiling suggests.
No. 01
36.2M
There are 36,207,130 small businesses in the United States. They make up 99.9% of all U.S. firms.
of small businesses have no employees at all. The typical American small business is one person — a freelancer, tradesperson or sole proprietor — not a storefront with staff.
of U.S. exporting firms are small businesses — yet they account for just 33% of export value. Nearly everyone who exports is small; most of the dollars are not.
Americans are launching companies at the fastest pace ever recorded, and the odds of lasting are better than the folklore says. Size is no protection either — our rundown of the biggest business failures of all time shows household names closing for the same reasons corner shops do.
No. 07
5.67M
business applications were filed in 2025 — the most on record, about 15,500 every day and 62% more than in 2019.
of new businesses survive their first year. The claim that “most businesses fail in year one” is a myth: of 988,310 establishments opened in the year to March 2024, 769,449 were still operating a year later.
Cash is where most small firms feel the squeeze. The Federal Reserve’s annual survey of more than 6,500 employer firms shows costs rising faster than sales, owners covering gaps out of their own pockets, and a lending market where the choice of lender changes your odds.
No. 12
73%
of small employer firms say the rising cost of goods, services or wages was a financial challenge in the past year — the most common one by a wide margin.
report higher costs tied to tariffs, rising to 69% of retailers and 62% of manufacturers. Of firms facing pricier imports, 76% passed at least part of the increase on to customers.
of firms that borrowed from online lenders said the cost was higher than expected. Even so, the share of applicants turning to them climbed from 17% to 29% in five years.
of firms using AI report higher productivity and 31% report higher sales — but the vast majority saw no change in labor costs, and only 7% have fully integrated it.
The hardest input to find is still people — and the public is firmly on the side of the small firms doing the hiring. For practical reading between data releases, the NYSSBDC blog is updated regularly.
No. 22
36%
of small business owners had job openings they could not fill in July 2026, well above the 24% historical average. Labor quality was named the single biggest problem by 27% of owners.
of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in small business, the highest of any institution Gallup measures. Big business scores 17%; Congress, 9%.
Small business in 2026 is bigger, younger and more resilient than its reputation. More companies are being started than at any point on record, four in five get through their first year, and the public trusts them more than any other institution in American life.
The pressure is financial. Costs are the dominant complaint, fewer than half of credit applicants get the full amount they ask for, and more than half of owners in a squeeze reach for their own savings. That last figure deserves attention: when the business and the household share one balance sheet, a bad year for one is a bad year for both.
That is why many owners deliberately build wealth outside the company, in retirement accounts and other assets that do not rise and fall with the firm. For the numbers behind one corner of that market, see our companion page of gold IRA statistics.
We gave priority to federal administrative and census data (SBA Office of Advocacy, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics), which count businesses directly. Second came the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey, a large annual survey run by all 12 Reserve Banks. Third were established private surveys (NFIB, Gallup, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wells Fargo), used only where no government series exists.
What we removed
The previous edition of this page included figures we could not trace to an original dataset — among them a “$55 trillion global SME market by 2027” projection, “82% of failures are caused by cash flow” and “only 30% of small businesses are approved for bank loans”. Those claims have been dropped rather than repeated.
Limitations
The Fed survey is a weighted convenience sample of employer firms, so it under-represents the 82% of businesses with no staff. BLS survival rates track establishments, and each milestone comes from a different starting cohort. NFIB and Chamber figures reflect their own members and panels. The NFIB figure is a monthly reading that moves. SBA’s net-new-jobs graphic shows 61% while its text states 60%; we report “6 in 10”.
Sources
SBA Office of Advocacy. Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, February 2026. View source
U.S. Census Bureau. Business Formation Statistics, monthly business applications (not seasonally adjusted), 2019–2025. View source
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Business Employment Dynamics, Table 7: Survival of private sector establishments by opening year (through March 2025). View source
Federal Reserve Banks. Small Business Credit Survey: 2026 Report on Employer Firms (fielded Sept–Nov 2025, 6,525 firms). View source
U.S. Small Business Administration. News release 25-83: FY2025 loan volume, September 30, 2025. View source
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Empowering Small Business technology report, 2025. View source
NFIB Research Center. Small Business Economic Trends, July 2026 survey. View source
Wells Fargo. 2026 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses report. View source
Gallup. Confidence in Institutions, final topline, June 1–15, 2026 (1,001 adults). View source
Have a question about these numbers?
Spotted a newer release, or want a statistic added? Tell us and we will check it against the source.
