The United States has 36,207,130 small businesses as of February 2026, representing 99.9% of all US businesses, according to the SBA Office of Advocacy’s Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026 report. That figure is consistent with the Office’s June 2025 State Profile, which put the count at 36.2 million based on 2022 Census data. Small businesses now employ 62.3 million people, 45.9% of the entire private-sector workforce, and most of them run with no employees at all.
If you are building, advising, or launching a small business site in 2026, the numbers below matter more than the round headline figure. They tell you how the count is built, where growth is concentrated, and how long a new business actually tends to last.
How many small businesses are there in the US?
The 36,207,130 small businesses counted by the SBA Office of Advocacy in February 2026 make up 99.9% of every business operating in the country. The Office defines a small business, for these economy-wide counts, as a firm with fewer than 500 employees, and it draws the underlying numbers from a partnership between itself and the US Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB) and Nonemployer Statistics (NES) programs.
| Metric | Figure | Data year |
|---|---|---|
| Total small businesses | 36,207,130 | 2026 |
| Share of all US businesses | 99.9% | 2026 |
| Small business employees | 62.3 million | 2022 |
| Share of private-sector workforce | 45.9% | 2022 |
Most of that 36.2 million total is made up of businesses with no paid staff. The chart below breaks the national count down by employee size class, using the 2022 Census data behind the SBA’s 2025 Small Business Profile.
Figure 1: Share of US small businesses by employee count. Source: SBA Office of Advocacy, 2025 Small Business Profile, citing 2022 Census data.
A small business, by this count, is far more likely to be a single person running a consulting practice or a delivery route than a company with a storefront and a payroll. That distinction matters for the next section, since not every firm under 500 employees is treated the same way by the agencies that define “small.”
What counts as a “small business”?
The SBA Office of Advocacy generally defines a small business, for its national and state profiles, as a firm with fewer than 500 employees. That single threshold is what produces the 36.2 million figure used throughout this article, and it is what most journalists and researchers cite when they need one national number.
The reality underneath that threshold is more layered. The SBA’s Office of Size Standards sets separate, industry-specific limits that can allow more employees in some sectors or swap the employee count for a revenue cap entirely, since a 499-employee software firm and a 499-employee steel mill are not comparable by headcount alone. The 500-employee line is a simplification used for economy-wide reporting, not the legal test applied to every federal contract or loan program.
Figure 2: How the SBA’s economy-wide small business count is built. Source: SBA Office of Advocacy, “About this profile” methodology note.
For anyone reading a small business statistic in the wild, the practical takeaway is to check which definition sits behind it. A 500-employee threshold and a revenue-based threshold can produce meaningfully different national counts for the same industry.
How many small businesses have employees versus none at all?
29,811,495 of the 36.2 million small businesses in the United States have no employees at all, run instead by a sole owner, a freelancer, or a gig-economy operator. Another 5,720,093 have between 1 and 19 employees, and only 654,501 employ between 20 and 499 people.
| Employee count | Businesses | Share of all small businesses |
|---|---|---|
| No employees | 29,811,495 | 82.4% |
| 1 to 19 employees | 5,720,093 | 15.8% |
| 20 to 499 employees | 654,501 | 1.8% |
| All small businesses | 36,186,089 | 100% |
Employer small businesses still dominate the workforce numbers, even though they are a small minority of the count. All industries combined, 6,374,594 small employers, 99.7% of every employer firm in the country, account for the bulk of the 62.3 million small business employees and 38.7% of total private-sector payroll.
A large share of the businesses with no employees run on a website rather than a storefront. Our separate breakdown of small business website adoption in 2026 covers how many of those operators actually have one, and our count of how many websites exist in 2026 puts that online infrastructure in context.
Which industries have the most small businesses?
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services leads every industry with 4,881,738 small businesses, ahead of Transportation and Warehousing at 4,089,883 and Other Services at 3,860,519. Construction and Real Estate round out the top five.
Figure 3: Top five industries by small business count. Source: SBA Office of Advocacy, 2025 Small Business Profile, citing 2022 Census data.
Nearly all of Transportation and Warehousing’s count runs without employees, 3,854,720 of its 4,089,883 small businesses, reflecting the large number of independent owner-operator drivers counted in that sector. Professional Services shows a similar pattern but with a bigger employer segment, 815,006 firms with 1 to 19 staff on top of 4,013,209 with none.
Which states have the most small businesses?
California has more small businesses than any other state, 4.34 million, followed by Texas at 3.52 million and Florida at 3.49 million.
Figure 4: States with the highest small business counts. Source: SBA Office of Advocacy, 2025 Small Business Profiles for the States, Territories, and Nation.
Raw counts favor big, populous states, but employment share tells a different story. Montana has the highest share of its workforce employed by small businesses, 66.3%, followed by Wyoming at 65.2% and Vermont at 62.1%, all states where a handful of large employers do not dominate the local economy the way they do in California or Texas.
How many small businesses survive long term?
79.6% of establishments opened in the year ending March 2015 were still operating one year later. By the five-year mark, March 2020, that had fallen to 50.2%. By the ten-year mark, March 2025, only 34.7% remained.
Figure 5: Survival rate of the March 2015 establishment cohort. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, Table 7.
These figures track a single cohort of establishments born in the year ending March 2015 and follow the same group forward, rather than mixing different birth years together. The pattern holds across older cohorts too: businesses opened in the year ending March 1994 posted almost identical numbers, 79.6% at one year and 49.6% at five years, showing the survival curve has been remarkably stable across three decades of BLS tracking.
How many jobs and new businesses do small businesses create each year?
Between March 2023 and March 2024, small businesses opened 1.1 million new establishments and closed 982,940, and added a net 1.2 million jobs, 88.9% of the entire country’s net job growth for that period. Small business employment overall grew 13.1% between 1998 and 2022, reaching the current 62.3 million figure.
Figure 6: Small business growth milestones. Source: SBA Office of Advocacy, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Census Bureau.
If you are one of the 1.1 million small businesses that opened in the US last year, the legal groundwork matters as much as the launch itself. You can generate a terms and conditions agreement for your site or store in a few minutes and have it in place before your first sale.
Who owns America’s small businesses?
Women made up 46.9% of the US workforce in 2022 and owned 44.6% of businesses, 14,029,282 in total. Veterans made up 4.3% of workers and owned a slightly larger 5.3% share of businesses, and Hispanic owners held 16.5% of businesses against an 18.1% share of the workforce.
| Group | Share of workers | Share of business ownership | Businesses owned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Women | 46.9% | 44.6% | 14,029,282 |
| Veterans | 4.3% | 5.3% | 1,651,542 |
| Hispanic | 18.1% | 16.5% | 5,603,202 |
Ownership shares in this data include equal and majority ownership, drawn from the Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey and Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics, both 2022 data. Veterans are the one group in this table who own a larger share of businesses than their share of the workforce would predict.
The Bottom Line
The number worth remembering is not just 36.2 million, it is that 82.4% of those businesses have no employees at all. Most “small business” statistics implicitly describe an employer with a storefront and staff, but the actual US small business population is dominated by sole owners and independent operators. If you run one of those businesses, or you are building tools and content for people who do, the practical numbers to plan around are the ones that follow from that: a roughly 1 in 5 chance your establishment does not survive its first year, a 1.2 million net jobs added in the most recent 12-month period on record, and a workforce, 62.3 million people, that is nearly half of everyone employed in the US private sector.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many small businesses are there in the United States? There are 36,207,130 small businesses in the United States as of February 2026, representing 99.9% of all US businesses, according to the SBA Office of Advocacy’s Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026 report.
What is considered a small business? The SBA Office of Advocacy generally defines a small business as a firm with fewer than 500 employees for its economy-wide profiles. The SBA’s Office of Size Standards sets more precise, industry-specific thresholds that can allow more employees or use a revenue cap instead.
What percentage of small businesses have no employees at all? 82.4% of US small businesses have no employees, 29,811,495 sole proprietors and similar operations, according to 2022 Census Nonemployer Statistics compiled in the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Small Business Profile. Only 1.8% have 20 to 499 employees.
What percentage of new small businesses survive 10 years? 34.7% of establishments opened in March 2015 were still operating in March 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics data. 79.6% survived their first year, and 50.2% survived five years.
Sources and References
- SBA Office of Advocacy. (2026). “Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026.” Headline count of 36,207,130 small businesses, 99.9% of US businesses, as of February 2026.
- SBA Office of Advocacy. (2025). “2025 Small Business Profile: United States.” Size, industry, export, loan, and demographic ownership data, based on 2022 Census figures.
- SBA Office of Advocacy. (2025). “New Advocacy Report Shows the Number of Small Businesses in the U.S. Exceeds 36 Million.” State rankings and March 2023 to March 2024 job creation figures.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Business Employment Dynamics, Table 7: Survival of Private Sector Establishments by Opening Year.” Establishment survival rates by birth cohort.
- US Census Bureau. “Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB).” Underlying employer firm and employment data, 2022.
- US Census Bureau. “Nonemployer Statistics (NES).” Underlying no-employee business data, 2022.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Small business counts are refreshed at least twice a year as the SBA Office of Advocacy and Census Bureau release updated data.
