Main Street Monday – Veteran-Owned Small Businesses Generated $1.27 Trillion in Sales in 2018
November 28, 2022
Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor
Main Street Monday – Veteran-Owned Small Businesses Generated $1.27 Trillion in Sales in 2018
Earlier in November, the SBA Office of Advocacy released facts about small businesses with a focus on veteran ownership statistics. Their information used the most recent Census Bureau data to show veteran-owned small businesses’ contributions to the economy.
These are the facts:
• In 2018, veterans owned nearly 2 million businesses.
• Of those businesses, over 480,000 were employer firms.
• Veteran-owned businesses employed 5.2 million people in 2018.
• The total employer sales of veteran-owned small businesses reached $1.2 trillion.
• The annual payroll of the veteran-owned small businesses was $232.6 billion.
• There were over 1.5 million veteran-owned small businesses that were nonemployer firms.
• Sales for those small businesses that were nonemployer businesses reached $70.2 billion in 2018.
• The most popular type of veteran employer firm was in professional services with 73,445 businesses in 2019.
• The second most common veteran-owned small business was in the construction industry with 65,841 businesses.
• The third and fourth most common veteran-owned small businesses were in the retail trade and healthcare industries with over 45,000 businesses each.
• The accommodation & food service industry, other businesses, administrative support industry, and real estate industry had similar numbers of veteran-owned small businesses in 2019 ranging from 30,500 to 32,500.
• The least common industries that veterans chose for their small businesses were transportation with just over 18,000 businesses and finance with almost 18,000 businesses.