For Small Business Week 2026, the Small Business Expo Research Team surveyed over 11,000 small business owners across the country, looking beyond broad economic signals to understand how businesses are actually operating on the ground.
What emerges from the data is a picture of an environment that is active and stable, even if it is not particularly fast-moving. Businesses are open, revenue is coming in, and most owners remain confident about where they are headed.
At the same time, growth is not happening automatically or evenly. Small businesses are moving forward, but they are doing so deliberately, adjusting to conditions that support progress without fully guaranteeing it.
Confidence Remains High
More than 82% of small business owners report confidence in their growth over the next six months, a figure that would ordinarily signal broad expansion.
In this case, the picture is more restrained. Across confidence levels, businesses report largely the same set of challenges. Highly optimistic owners are no less likely to cite difficulty in finding customers than those who are uncertain.
Confidence, then, appears less as an indication of favorable conditions and more as a reflection of how owners assess their ability to navigate those conditions.
Demand Sets the Pace
Customer demand emerges as the central variable shaping business decisions.
More than 53% of respondents identify finding customers as their primary challenge, placing it well ahead of cost pressures, hiring, or access to capital.
This constraint carries through to other areas of the business. Hiring decisions tend to follow realized demand rather than anticipated growth. Investment is directed toward activities with a clearer link to revenue. Expansion, where it occurs, is paced more cautiously.
In effect, demand determines not only whether businesses grow, but how they structure that growth.
Policy Influences Outlook
Perceptions of government support are mixed, with relatively few businesses indicating that they feel strongly supported.
Those perceptions do appear to shape expectations. Businesses that feel supported are considerably more likely to anticipate economic improvement, while those that do not are more inclined to expect deterioration.
What is less evident is any corresponding shift in day-to-day operations. Across industries, businesses continue to cluster around moderate and stable outcomes, suggesting that sentiment affects outlook more directly than it alters underlying conditions.
Inflation’s Impact Varies
Inflation continues to register across the dataset, though not with uniform intensity.
Most businesses report slight to moderate pressure, while 17.7% indicate severe impact. At the same time, roughly 31% report little to no impact at all.
This distribution points to a differentiated experience. Some businesses have absorbed cost increases through pricing or operational adjustments, while others continue to face more direct margin pressure.
Rather than acting as a universal constraint, inflation now appears as a variable that affects businesses to varying degrees.
Hiring Moves with Demand
Hiring data aligns with the broader pattern of measured decision-making.
A majority of businesses—54%—expect no change in staffing, while approximately 31% plan modest increases. Only a small minority anticipate either significant expansion or reductions.
At the same time, hiring conditions are seldom described as easy. Most businesses report either neutral or somewhat difficult conditions, with only a small share indicating that hiring is straightforward.
Taken together, these findings suggest that hiring is not the primary constraint on growth. Instead, it reflects underlying demand conditions, adjusting in response to them rather than shaping them.
Operations Show Stability
Despite ongoing concerns about external risks, most businesses report limited operational disruption.
Nearly 79% indicate that public safety has no noticeable impact on their operations, with relatively few reporting significant negative effects.
This stability provides an important point of reference. The primary challenges facing small businesses are not rooted in their ability to operate, but in the conditions under which they pursue growth.
Technology Drives Outcomes
The role of technology becomes more pronounced when viewed in relation to performance.
While many businesses report a positive impact and others report little change, the distinction becomes clearer in demand outcomes. Among businesses reporting a positive impact, 37.2% say demand exceeded expectations. Among those reporting negative impact, 49.0% report demand falling short.
This suggests that technology is increasingly tied to how effectively businesses capture demand, rather than simply how they manage operations.
Looking Forward
The small business environment in 2026 is best understood as stable but constrained.
Businesses are operating, and in many cases progressing, but they are doing so under conditions that require careful calibration. Demand remains the primary limiting factor, with hiring, investment, and expansion adjusting accordingly.
Growth is present, but it is selective. And it is shaped less by broad economic signals than by how effectively individual businesses navigate the conditions in front of them.