32 Million: How Many US Businesses Have No Employees

What counts as a nonemployer business

The Census Bureau defines a nonemployer business as an establishment with no paid employees that is subject to federal income tax and has annual receipts of $1,000 or more ($1 or more in construction).⁴ The count comes mainly from business income tax records the IRS gives the Census Bureau; there is no survey.⁴⁶

Most nonemployers are self-employed people running unincorporated businesses, known as sole proprietorships, which may or may not be the owner’s main source of income. Some partnerships and corporations are in the count too.⁵

Some businesses are left out by design. Nonprofits are excluded because they don’t file federal income tax returns.⁴ So are seven industries: crop production, animal production and aquaculture, the Postal Service, funds and trusts, management of companies, private households and public administration.⁵ Businesses with receipts above an industry-specific ceiling are dropped, because Census assumes receipts that large belong to the employer universe.⁶ Businesses in the island areas, such as Puerto Rico and Guam, aren’t covered.⁴ In the other direction, Census notes that some employers whose staff are all leased through an employee-leasing company can end up counted as nonemployers.⁶

What “one-person” means here

The 32 million is a count of businesses, not of people. Census counts each distinct business income tax return from a business with no paid employees as one firm.⁴ It doesn’t publish how many owners are behind those returns.

“No paid employees” isn’t always one person, either. A partnership is, by the IRS’s definition, a relationship between two or more people doing business together,¹⁰ and partnerships make up 2,367,086 of the 2024 count.¹ Corporations can have more than one owner too.

Nor is every nonemployer a full-time business. Census says most nonemployers are self-employed people whose business may be, but isn’t necessarily, their primary income source.⁹ And the two groups aren’t the same: a self-employed owner can also be an employer.⁴ On this site, “one-person business” is shorthand for what Census measures, a business with no one on payroll.

How they split by legal form

Sole proprietorships dominate: 27,644,187 of the 31,985,874 nonemployer businesses in 2024, or 86.4% (our calculation). Partnerships come next with 2,367,086, then S corporations with 1,489,244 and C corporations and other corporate forms with 485,357.¹⁷

Average receipts differ a lot by form. Sole proprietorships averaged $40,670 each in 2024, against $168,129 for partnerships, $169,961 for S corporations and $177,233 for C corporations (our calculations from the Census totals).¹ Receipts are gross: everything a business takes in from all sources before expenses are deducted,⁹ so these averages are not what owners earn.

Most take in modest sums

Census also sorts nonemployers by the size of their receipts. The biggest single band in 2024 was $10,000 to $24,999, with 7,377,611 businesses. 7,176,486 took in less than $5,000. At the other end, 1,051 nonemployers reported $5 million or more.¹⁷

Receipt bands exactly as Census publishes them (U.S. level only). Census doesn’t publish receipts for each band in these files. Share is each band’s count divided by the 31,985,874 total; change compares each band’s 2024 count with its 2023 count; both are our calculations.¹²⁷

How they compare with employer firms

The latest year with both counts from the Census Bureau is 2023. That year there were 30.4 million nonemployer businesses, with $1.8 trillion in receipts, and approximately 5.9 million employer firms, according to the 2023 Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics and the 2024 Annual Business Survey, which covers 2023.¹¹ The two products count slightly different things: the survey counts employer firms, and a firm can have several locations, while NES counts tax returns.⁴¹¹

Census’s own write-up of the 2023 data puts it this way: from 2012 to 2023 the number of nonemployers grew an average 2.7% a year while employers averaged 1.1%, and employers’ share of all US businesses shrank from 24.6% to 21.6%. The same piece puts nonemployers’ receipts at approximately 6.4% of 2023 US gross domestic product.⁹

2024 against 2023

The count rose from 30,427,808 in 2023 to 31,985,874 in 2024, up 5.1%, and receipts rose 6.2%, from $1.75 trillion to $1.86 trillion (our calculations from the two U.S. files).¹² For comparison, Census reported growth of 4.9% in 2021, 4.7% in 2022 and 2.1% in 2023.⁹

Two cautions from Census itself. It doesn’t restate earlier years when methods or industry codes change, so it advises against analyzing several NES years as a time series.⁶ And the 2024 file is the last before a change: from reference year 2025, NES will apply new disclosure avoidance rules under a Department of Commerce order.⁵

New applications: the Business Formation Statistics

NES runs well behind the calendar: the 2024 figures came out on September 29, 2026.³ For a monthly signal, Census publishes Business Formation Statistics, which count applications for an Employer Identification Number (EIN), the federal tax ID, made mainly for business purposes.¹²¹⁴ An application isn’t a business, and it isn’t a nonemployer: the series measures intent to start, and Census tracks separately which applications turn into employers with payroll.¹⁴

In August 2026, the latest month published, there were 531,728 business applications, seasonally adjusted, down 7.8% from July 2026.¹² That’s up 11.4% on August 2025 (our calculation from the monthly series).¹³ Only 34,263 of them gave a planned date for paying wages, 6.4% of all applications, against 13.8% in August 2019 (our calculations).¹³ Census projects that 28,501 employer businesses will form within four quarters from the August 2026 applications; that figure is Census’s projection, not a count.¹² The September figures are scheduled for October 14, 2026.¹⁵

Monthly counts from the Census BFS time series, seasonally adjusted, as published with the August 2026 release; the year-on-year change is our calculation. High-propensity applications are those whose IRS Form SS-4 details are associated with a high rate of becoming a business with payroll; applications with planned wages are high-propensity applications that give a first wages-paid date.¹⁴ Census restated the whole series to 2022 NAICS codes and, from the January 2026 release, removed applications tied to internet sales from the high-propensity series for every year, so these figures differ from those first published.¹⁶