Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026

Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business 2026 Now available advocacy.sba.gov

Advocacy’s most popular publication, Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, gathers the most up-to-date statistics about American small businesses in one place. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business is a convenient place to find facts about the state of the small business economy, including the following: 

  • 99.9 percent of businesses are small. 
  • There are 36,207,130 small businesses in the United States. 
  • U.S. small businesses employ 62.3 million people, 45.9 percent of private sector workers. 
  • Economic activity from small businesses makes up 43.5 percent of GDP. 
  • Over 80 percent of the paperwork burden for small businesses comes from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alone 

Small businesses pay 38.7 percent of total private sector payroll.