52 chartbooks reveal small business trends by city, industry, revenue and more
May 12, 2025
The 12 Federal Reserve Banks have released 52 chartbooks providing deep data on all different types of small businesses.
The 2025 Firms in Focus chartbooks show how small business conditions and lending trends vary by city, state, industry, owner demographics and more (scroll down for full list of categories). All charts are based on data from the 2024 Small Business Credit Survey.
The charts can be used to answer questions like:
- How did small retailers perform last year?
- Do startup companies expect revenue to grow or decline?
- What challenges do young entrepreneurs face?
- What’s the loan approval rate for women-owned businesses?
- What percentage of minority-owned businesses use community development financial institutions (CDFIs)?
- What types of companies rely on community banks?
- Where do companies with low credit scores go to borrow money?
To download the chartbooks, visit the 2025 Firms in Focus page on fedsmallbusiness.org.
Want more small business data? See how answers to key survey questions have changed over time: 2025 Main Street Metrics: Trends over Time from the Small Business Credit Survey
Questions? Contact Chuck Soder: chuck.soder@clev.frb.org, 216.672.2798
Chartbooks available by category:
Company characteristics
- Age of firm
- Credit risk
- Firm size by number of employees
- Firm size by revenue
- Geography (Rural or urban)
- Industry
Owner characteristics
- Age of primary owner
- Disability status
- Gender of owner(s)
- Immigrant-owned businesses
- LGBTQ-owned businesses
- Race and ethnicity of owner(s) – Black, Hispanic, Asian, white and American Indian/Alaska Native (Native American)
- Veteran-owned businesses
State
- Alabama
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wisconsin
City (metro area)
- Atlanta
- Boston
- Chicago
- Honolulu
- Houston
- Los Angeles
- Miami
- New York City
- Philadelphia
- Phoenix
- Portland
- San Francisco
- Tampa
- Washington, D.C.
What is a small business?
For the purposes of this survey, a small business is defined as a company with fewer than 500 employees. Firms in that range represent 99.7% of all employer establishments in the United States. The Firms in Focus chartbooks focus on employer firms, which have at least one employee, other than the owner(s).
About the Small Business Credit Survey
The 2024 survey was fielded from September 4 to November 4, 2024. It yielded 7,653 responses from a national sample of small businesses with at least one employee. Responses were received from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Respondents are asked to report information about their business performance, financing needs and choices, and borrowing experiences. Responses to the Small Business Credit Survey are used to produce several reports providing insight on small business conditions and lending trends. The survey is not a random sample. Results should be analyzed with awareness of potential biases that are associated with convenience samples.