The Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS), a collaboration among all 12 Federal Reserve Banks, is an annual survey of small businesses that has been conducted nationally since 2016. The survey includes long-running questions on business performance and financing needs, including questions on special topics such as challenges with hiring and retaining workers. Since its inception, the SBCS has provided stakeholders from researchers to policymakers valuable data on the challenges business owners face when trying to grow and fund their firms. Importantly, the SBCS also collects data about owner and business demographics. The data allow for detailed analyses of business conditions across subcategories such as race and ethnicity of the owner(s), age of the business, and geography.
The Firms in Focus chartbooks shown on this page feature findings from the 2022 SBCS by state. Firms in Focus users can easily compare data for employer firms within their state of interest to data for employer firms across the United States. State-level data are published only for those states in which 100 or more employer firms responded to the SBCS. As such, Firms in Focus chartbooks are available only for select states.
The Firms in Focus chartbooks include appendix slides that provide information on the SBCS, and additional information on survey methodology and definitions can be found in the 2023 Report on Employer Firms.