Regardless of all the challenges they face, small businesses have been doing pretty well in this country across the board. Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the latest numbers.
For more than 50 years, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has published a monthly report of small-business economic trends, based on a random sample of the organization’s approximately 300,000 member firms. This survey is one of the longest and most consistent of any I follow, using the same questionnaire since 1973. So where do things stand?
Last year ended with a second consecutive monthly uptick in small-business optimism, with small-business owners anticipating that economic conditions would remain generally favorable going into 2026. Business owners reported that their cost pressures moderated, employment challenges eased (for most) and capital investments picked up.
“The December data also delivered good news on a major 2025 pain point, with a welcome improvement in uncertainty,” reported the study’s economists.
Fiserv’s Small Business Index, which aggregates consumer spending activity from point-of-sale transaction data across some 2m US small firms, highlighted that monthly sales rose over the prior month in December.
“December’s sales gains show the resilience of small businesses during a competitive holiday season,” said Prasanna Dhore, chief data officer at Fiserv. “Consumers focused on essentials and made selective discretionary purchases, driven by ongoing cost pressures. These patterns, resulting in modest monthly sales growth, highlight how small businesses continue to adjust in a challenging economic climate.”
Comerica Bank’s Small Business Pulse Index, a survey of more than 1,000 small-business owners across the US, found 80% of respondents in mid-November were “somewhat or very confident” about their business outlook for the next 12 months, with 79% anticipating revenue growth in 2026 – and an average projected increase of 7.9%. Technology and construction firms led in optimism, while sole proprietors and retail businesses showed more caution. Some 57% of the businesses in the survey said they were planning to make capital expenditures, and more than half said that recent Federal Reserve rate cuts had positively affected their business.
Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks, publishes its own monthly Small Business Index, drawn from transactions across more than 420,000 small businesses in its database. The company’s January numbers show that small-business employment increased modestly, with upticks in eight of 12 industry sectors. The company also reported that small-business employment increased in all eight US regions and that hiring increased in 13 of 20 states tracked. The index also showed reported revenue was up in all US regions compared with November.
This doesn’t mean that everyone’s doing great. We live in a big country. There are 33m small businesses. We all have different challenges.
The NFIB reports that members in the agricultural industry are struggling with tariffs and dramatically higher costs, some retailers are seeing slower sales (and increased competition from big box stores), many truckers are struggling with increased regulations and some service firms are struggling to convince consumers to spend money when other prices remain high.
Comerica says small businesses are still very much concerned with inflation, tariffs and regulations, with “most expecting tariff impacts to persist or worsen in 2026”.
Among the small businesses that I work for, finding talent remains a persistent issue. And the rising cost of healthcare – a critical employee benefit – is creating huge pressures, for both companies and their employees.
But no one said that running your own business was easy. If it were, more people would be doing it. And more of the people who choose to be business owners would stay in business longer than just a few years.
But, for the most part, US small businesses fared pretty well in 2025, and a significant majority are optimistic about the coming year. Maybe that’s the glass-is-half-full attitude of the American entrepreneur. We’ll see.
