Wisconsin has added small businesses at roughly the same pace as the nation since 2010, but it has added jobs within those businesses at a significantly slower rate, according to a new study from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Joe Peterangelo, research director for the Wisconsin Policy Forum and a co-author of the study “Small Business, Big Stakes: The state of Wisconsin’s small businesses,” said Wisconsin entrepreneurs are doing well in starting businesses but find it difficult to grow them into larger ventures.
Wisconsin had 37.3% more small business establishments in 2025 than 2010, compared with a 37.2% increase nationally.
In 2025, establishments with fewer than 10 employees (“micro-businesses”) accounted for more than three-quarters (77.3%) of Wisconsin’s total small business establishments.
They have consistently accounted for at least 73% of those establishments since 2010 or earlier.
A slightly higher share of small businesses in the United States (80.7%) had fewer than 10 employees in 2025.
Based on interviews Peterangelo has conducted for this report and past research, a lot of small businesses, especially newer small businesses, lack sufficient funding to grow, lack the preparation and a business plan and other things necessary to attract capital (beyond lines of credit from a bank) to grow to the next level.
The state needs more businesses in the 100- to 500-employee range because they can pay higher wages than the “micros,” he said.
The report said targeted support to help small businesses grow into larger size classes “may hold particular promise.”
In a somewhat counterintuitive finding, Wisconsin does not perform as well in five-year business survival compared to the rest of the country, yet it performs better than the 10-year business survival. In 2018, the state’s five-year survival rate was 56.2%, compared to 69.6% nationally. In contrast, the 10-year survival rate among Wisconsin businesses launched in 2014 was 51.7% in 2024 versus 50.5% nationally.
“The small business experts that we interviewed for this report, their take was that Wisconsin does well when a business is able to survive through the initial years that are more difficult to get through,” Peterangelo said. “So, if we could boost that short-term survival, we’d likely see Wisconsin become even stronger.”
