Main Street Monday – The Biden-Harris Administration’s Plan to Support Record-Breaking Small Business Growth

May 9, 2022

Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor

Main Street Monday – The Biden-Harris Administration’s Plan to Support Record-Breaking Small Business Growth

Source: Business Formation Statistics

“The boom in new business creation has been particularly strong for entrepreneurs of color. In 2021, Hispanic Americans started new businesses at the fastest rate in more than a decade and 23 percent faster than pre-pandemic levels. And, in the three-quarters of 2021, small businesses with fewer than 50 employees created 1.9 million jobs, the fastest start to small business job growth in any year on record,” reads the Small Business Boom Under the Biden-Harris Administration report released for National Small Business Week.

Here are the facts:
• 5.4 million new businesses were formed in 2021, 20% higher than any previous year on record and over two-thirds higher than the annual average of 3.2 million new businesses per year in the five years prior to the pandemic.
• 1.8 billion of these businesses planned to hire, 17% higher than the previous annual record and 40% over the pre-pandemic average.
• The number of businesses in the third quarter of 2021 was 7% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
• Nearly three-quarters of all counties in the country had more businesses in the third quarter of 2021 than pre-pandemic.

PPP 2021 statistics:
• In 2021, there was a 67% increase in loans for businesses in low- to moderate-income communities.
• There was a 35% increase in loans to businesses with less than 20 employees in 2021.
• Loans to rural small businesses increased by 40% in 2021.
• There was an average loan size of $42,000 in 2021.
• The number of loans made by Community Financial Institutions increased to 1.4 million, nearly 6 times that of the previous Administration.

To continue supporting small business growth, the Biden-Harris Administration created a strategy based on four pillars.

  1. Expanding access to capital by offering more than $300 billion in loans and equity investments through the end of the decade.
  2. Making historic investments in programs that help entrepreneurs find the resources they need.
  3. Leveraging Federal procurement, infrastructure spending, and research development to direct hundreds of billions in government contracts to small businesses.
  4. Leveling the playing field for small business owners by reforming the tax code.

Source:
The Small Business Boom Under the Biden-Harris Administration Report