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Personal Finance Reports

Lately, These Places Have Seen the Most Business Openings

Published Feb 19, 2020
2-min read
Mike Brown Author Photo
Written by Mike Brown
Mike Brown Author Photo
Written by Mike Brown

Expertise:

Mike Brown uses data from surveys and publicly-available resources to identify emerging personal finance trends and tell unique stories. Mike’s work, featured in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, provides consumers with a personal finance measuring stick to make informed financial decisions.

Learn more about Mike Brown

For any city, the opening of a new business, no matter if it’s a 500-employee corporation or a two-person mom-and-pop shop, is almost always a welcomed sight.

More businesses mean more tax revenue for the local government, more foot traffic for other entrepreneurs, and more options for local consumers.

With this in mind, LendEDU analyzed the most-recent U.S. Census Bureau data pertaining to the number of business establishments opened and closed in each metro and micro area in the United States between 2015 and 2016. This dataset was released on July 31, 2019.

Each city was ranked according to its net number of business openings, meaning the number of business openings minus the number of business closings over the same period of time.

The highly-ranked places you will find below have recently become attractive locations for business owners to set up shop.

Cities With the Most Business Openings

To see how a city ranked within only its state, either sort the table on the “State” column or type in your desired state’s abbreviation into the search bar. 

Methodology

All data found in this report derives from the U.S. Census Bureau. Specifically, we pulled statistics on business openings and closings for each metropolitan and micropolitan statistical area in the U.S. This data was released on July 31st, 2019 and reflects business openings and closings that occurred between 2015 and 2016.

To be considered for the report, a metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area had to have an employment figure of less than 500,000 so that the largest areas weren’t disproportionately at the top of the rankings. Also, metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas that encompassed more than one city were removed from the analysis for this particular study.

To complete the analysis, an area’s respective number of business closings between 2015 and 2016 was subtracted from the same area’s number of business openings between 2015 and 2016 to get the net business openings figure that each area was ranked on. Metropolitan and micropolitan areas were ranked in descending order according to their respective net business openings figures.

See more of LendEDU’s Research