Small Business Finance Statistics: Profit, Debt, Credit and Survival

Profitability and Revenue (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)
Small Business Debt (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

These small business finance figures come from official sources: the Federal Reserve Banks' Small Business Credit Survey, the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey, the SBA Office of Advocacy and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each figure gives its source, the year it covers and who was surveyed. Figures we couldn't trace to an original source were left out.

For cash reserves, late payments, the number of small businesses and overall financing approval rates, see cash flow statistics. For supplier payments, see accounts payable statistics, and for payment methods between businesses, see B2B payment trends.

All sources were opened on October 29, 2026.

Profitability and Revenue (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

The Federal Reserve Banks' 2026 Report on Employer Firms presents findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS). The report says: "The 2025 SBCS was fielded from September 3 to November 14, 2025. It yielded 6,525 responses from a nationwide convenience sample of small employer firms with 1–499 full- or part-time employees across all 50 states and the District of Columbia." The Fed notes that "The SBCS is not a random sample".

Profitability: "Just under half of firms were operating at a profit at the end of 2024." The report's chart shows 47% at a profit, 19% at break-even and 34% at a loss.
Revenue: over the 12 months before the survey, 40% of firms reported that revenue increased, 18% no change and 42% that it decreased.
Expectations: "The revenue expectations index fell six points year over year, from 39 to 33, and the employment expectations index fell three points, from 26 to 23."

Small Business Debt (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

From the same report, at the time of the 2025 survey:

No debt: "The share of firms with no outstanding debt (31%) has grown moderately since the 2020 survey (21%), returning to prepandemic levels."
Amount owed: "63% held $100K or less", counting the firms with no debt, and "37% held more than $100K". 8% owed more than $1 million.
Collateral: "Of firms that have debt, 59% used a personal guarantee to secure their debt, while 51% used business assets."
Personal assets: "The share of debtholders that secured their debt with the owner's personal assets increased to 38% from 31% in 2019 when this question was last included in the SBCS."

Financing Small Businesses Use (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

86% of firms use financing on a regular basis. The share of employer firms using each product on a regular basis:

Credit card: 62%
Loan (including a mortgage for the business): 44%
Line of credit: 36%
Trade credit: 19%
Lease: 14%
Merchant cash advance: 7%
Factoring: 3%
No external financing: 14%

"Among firms that regularly use a credit card (N=4,016), 58% use only a business credit card, 8% use only a personal credit card, and 34% use both."

Loan Applications and Lenders (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

Applications: 38% of firms applied for a loan, line of credit or merchant cash advance in the 12 months before the survey.
Online lenders: "The share of applicants that sought financing at online fintech lenders has increased over the last five years, from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey."
Small banks: "Applicants that sought financing at small banks were more likely to be fully approved (57%) than those that sought financing from other lenders." The Fed defines small banks as those with less than $10 billion in total assets.
Borrowing costs: 60% of firms that borrowed from online lenders said actual borrowing costs were higher than expected. "Borrowers at small and large banks were less likely to report higher-than-expected borrowing costs (37% and 32%, respectively)."

How Firms Respond to Financial Challenges (Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey)

Among employer firms that reported a financial challenge in the 12 months before the survey (firms could choose more than one action):

Used personal funds: 54%
Raised prices: 48%
Used cash reserves: 47%
Reduced costs: 47%
Took out debt: 36%
Downsized operations: 31%
Made a late payment or did not pay: 24%
No action: 5%

For the challenges themselves, including rising costs and uneven cash flow, see cash flow statistics.

Credit Outcomes and Financial Health (Census Annual Business Survey)

The Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey (ABS) "samples approximately 850,000 employer businesses every 5 years and approximately 230,000 employer businesses annually". It covers employer businesses of every size, not only small ones. From the Census Bureau's February 2026 article on business financial health:

Applying for credit: 13.0% of employer businesses reported applying for new credit in 2023, as Census labels it, down from 14.3% in 2020.
Outcomes: for businesses that applied, the article says: "Most employer businesses (57.2%) received all the credit they applied for in 2023, up from 54.9% three years earlier. About a quarter (25.1%) received some of the credit they asked for in 2023". It puts the share that got none of the credit they requested at "7.2% in 2023, down from 10.8% in 2020."
Banks: counting only the employer businesses that applied for new credit, "In 2023, 73.1% of employer businesses sought new credit from a bank, up from 67.2% in 2020."
Finance companies: "22.8% of employer businesses seeking credit in 2023 turned to them, up from 18.0% in 2020." Applicants could apply to more than one source.
Concern about financial health: the share of employer businesses very concerned about their financial health was 17.3% in 2020, 27.4% in 2021 and 18.5% in 2022. The share not concerned at all was 40.2%, 31.3% and 41.9%.
Low debt balances: over 2020 to 2022, "the share of employer businesses with less than $5,000 in outstanding debt rose 4.8 percentage points to 43.1%."

A note on years: the Census article reports these credit results under "2023" and "2020". The SBA Office of Advocacy's 2026 FAQ lists its Census source as "Annual Business Survey 2023, Data Year 2022".

Small Business Lending and the Economy (SBA Office of Advocacy)

The SBA Office of Advocacy's small business finance FAQ (October 2024) puts small business lending in 2023 at "$657 billion in business loans outstanding for loans of $1 million or less", plus "another $653 billion worth of credit from finance companies".

Advocacy's small business FAQ for 2026 (February 2026), which defines a small business for research purposes as "an independent business having fewer than 500 employees", reports from 2022 Census data that small businesses account for:

Payroll: "38.7% of private sector payroll ($3.5 trillion)"
Receipts: "35.0% of private sector receipts ($17.8 trillion)"
Legal form: 55% of small employer firms were S corporations, and 12.3% were sole proprietorships.

Business Survival (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Business Employment Dynamics Table 7, survival of private sector establishments by opening year, covers new private sector establishments of every size, counted each March:

One year: of establishments that opened in the year ended March 2025, 78.9% were still operating in March 2026.
Five years: of those that opened in the year ended March 2021, 47.2% were still operating in March 2026.
Ten years: of those that opened in the year ended March 2016, 34.2% were still operating in March 2026.

Using the same data, the SBA Office of Advocacy's 2026 FAQ reports that from 1994 to 2022, an average of 67.7% of new employer establishments survived at least two years, 49.2% survived five years, 33.9% survived ten years and 25.5% survived fifteen years. "In 2023, 1.3 million business establishments opened for the first time, and about 1.2 million establishments closed permanently".

Job Creation (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The BLS defines small businesses here as firms with 249 or fewer employees, a narrower definition than Advocacy's.

2021 to 2024: from the first quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2024, small businesses made up 52.8% of total net job creation in the United States (BLS, May 2025).
2013 to 2023: small businesses employed an average of 46% of the covered workforce but contributed 55% of net job creation (BLS, May 2024).

Using These Figures

Check who was surveyed. The Fed's SBCS is a convenience sample of employer firms with 1 to 499 employees. The Census ABS covers employer businesses of every size. The BLS survival data covers establishments, not firms.
Don't compare approval rates across sources. The SBCS reports full approval among applicants for loans, lines of credit and cash advances, while the ABS reports credit received among all employer businesses that applied for new credit.
Check the data year. The SBCS figures describe 2025 and the end of 2024, the ABS figures 2020 to 2023, and Advocacy's share of payroll and receipts 2022.

Tracking What Clients Owe You in Billed

Billed's invoice software page says you can "take card and PayPal payments" on your invoices and "see which invoices are paid, partly paid or past due". In invoice reports, you can "see who owes you money and send them a payment reminder."

Related Guides

FAQ

What share of small businesses are profitable?

In the Federal Reserve's 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, 47% of employer firms were operating at a profit at the end of 2024, 19% were at break-even and 34% were operating at a loss.

How much debt do small businesses carry?

In the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, 31% of employer firms had no outstanding debt and 63% held $100,000 or less, counting those with none. 37% held more than $100,000, including 8% with more than $1 million.

What kinds of financing do small businesses use?

86% of employer firms in the Federal Reserve's 2025 survey use financing on a regular basis. Credit cards were used by 62%, loans by 44% and lines of credit by 36%, while 14% used no external financing.

Do businesses get the credit they apply for?

In the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey, 57.2% of employer businesses that applied for new credit in 2023 received all of it, 25.1% received some and 7.2% received none.

How long do new businesses survive?

Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that 47.2% of private sector establishments that opened in the year ended March 2021 were still operating five years later, and 34.2% of those that opened in the year ended March 2016 were still operating ten years later.

Was this article helpful?