Veteran-Owned Business Statistics 2026: Census Data

Veterans owned 1.6 million U.S. businesses in 2023, generating about $1.0 trillion in receipts, according to the Census Bureau. Of those, 261,000 were employer firms — 4.4% of all U.S. employer businesses, down from 4.7% a year earlier. The remaining 1.4 million are one-person operations.

How many veteran-owned businesses are there in the United States?

Veterans owned 1.6 million U.S. businesses in 2023 with roughly $1.0 trillion in combined receipts. About 261,000 of those were employer businesses with at least one employee on payroll, or 4.4% of all U.S. employer firms. Around 1.4 million were nonemployer businesses — 4.5% of all nonemployer firms, with $65.7 billion in receipts.

The source is the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey together with Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics, published in 2025 for reference year 2023. A firm counts as veteran-owned when veterans hold at least 51% of the equity, interest or stock, which means equally-owned businesses are tallied in a separate category rather than folded in.

There is a structural detail in these numbers that is easy to miss. Veterans hold almost exactly the same share of employer firms (4.4%) as of nonemployer firms (4.5%). Whatever thins out other groups at the transition from solo operator to payroll employer, it is not visibly thinning veteran-owned firms. That is a genuinely unusual profile in this dataset.

Veteran-owned employer firms are shrinking as a share of U.S. business

The direction of travel is the harder finding. For reference year 2022, the Census Bureau counted 273,542 veteran-owned employer firms, 4.7% of the U.S. total. A year later the count was about 261,000 and the share was 4.4% — roughly 12,500 fewer firms, a decline of about 4.6% in a single year, against a total employer base that grew.

The most likely driver is demographic rather than economic. The veteran population itself is shrinking and ageing as the Vietnam-era cohort leaves working life, and business ownership rates run highest among older veterans. A falling share of employer firms is partly a falling share of the workforce. That is worth saying plainly, because the number is sometimes presented as evidence that veteran businesses are failing at an unusual rate, which these figures do not show.

What the data cannot tell you is how many of those 12,500 firms closed versus were sold, merged, or simply dropped below the 51% veteran-ownership threshold when a partner bought in. Census counts firms, not outcomes. Treat the trend as real and the explanation as open.

What veteran-owned employer firms actually generate

For reference year 2022, veteran-owned employer firms reported $884.5 billion in receipts, 3.2 million employees and $179.7 billion in annual payroll. Those are substantial totals for 4.7% of firms, and running them per firm gives you a sense of the typical scale: roughly $3.2 million in annual receipts and about 12 employees per firm.

By way of comparison, women-owned employer firms in the same year averaged closer to $1.6 million in receipts and about 9 employees each. Veteran-owned employer businesses skew larger, and they cluster in capital-intensive sectors — construction, transportation, professional and technical services, manufacturing — where equipment, bonding and payroll all have to be funded before a single invoice is paid. Our figures for women-owned business statistics break down the other side of that comparison.

Both sets of per-firm averages are our arithmetic on published Census totals rather than Census-published figures, and a small number of large firms pulls any average upward. They describe the shape of the population, not a target for your own business.

Funding a veteran-owned business

Capital-intensive and payroll-heavy is a specific funding profile, and it points at specific products. Equipment that pays for itself over years should generally be financed over years rather than out of the operating account — that is what equipment financing exists for. The gap between finishing a job and getting paid for it is a different problem, and a line of credit or working capital funding is the usual fit there. Matching the product to the timing of the need is most of the decision.

On the question owners ask most: there is no federal loan program that lends directly to veterans for general business purposes. The Small Business Administration does not fund businesses itself — it guarantees loans made by participating lenders, and it runs veteran-focused business training and certification programs, including certification as a veteran-owned small business for federal contracting. Certification can open procurement doors; it is not a funding product. Anything advertised as guaranteed veteran business funding deserves a careful read of the terms.

The Broker Shop is a funding broker, not a funder. One 2-minute application goes to the funders in our network of 50+ whose guidelines your business meets, so several funders compete for the file rather than one deciding it. It is free to apply, and checking your options won't affect your credit score. If you want to see the full landscape first, start with the seven funding options and work backwards from the one that matches your timing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau — Census Bureau Releases New Data About Characteristics of Employer and Nonemployer Business Owners (2024 Annual Business Survey, reference year 2023) · U.S. Census Bureau — Census Bureau Releases New Data on Minority-Owned, Veteran-Owned and Women-Owned Businesses (2023 Annual Business Survey, reference year 2022)