Small Business Lending by the Numbers
Understanding the industry behind small business loans and small business lending certainly isn’t the easiest task at hand, primarily because this industry has become incredibly complicated over the past few years after the economy began falling apart. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that small businesses — not just startups — often need a lot of help from funding experts and from financial institutions to stay operating. Working capital loans for small businesses aren’t things you hear about everyday, but they’re very important — and this is why:
23.4%: The percentage of entrepreneurs from the Baby Boomer generation who have decided to start a business on their own — which is significantly higher than the 14.3% of Baby Boomers who were starting a business back in 1996.
28 million: The estimated number of small businesses currently existing in the U.S.
55%: The percentage of jobs, taken from the entire population of employment opportunities in the U.S., which are provided by small businesses on a regular basis.
19.4%: The percentage of a business’s expenses taken up just by employee wages — and even though this percentage is less than a fifth of the average business’s total expenses, it’s often the biggest single chunk of expenses for small businesses.
44.6%: The amount of businesses who stated that they were planning on investing in a marketing strategy to acquire new customers — which tends to be easier said than done for small businesses, since they’re always competing against the bigger chain stores.
Quite simply, small business loans don’t just provide necessary financial help to business owners trying to make a living today — small business loans provide employers with the resources needed to continue employing people in their communities and to continue contributing to the economy, making it stronger than ever before.
