Small business in America: The cities with the smallest businesses
American City Business Journals this week offers an in-depth look at small business in America. Our coverage includes an unveiling of our exclusive Small Business Vitality report: A ranking of 106 cities nationwide based on each city’s ability to foster the creation and development of small businesses.
Ahead of Thursday’s unveiling of that ranking, we’re taking a look at some of the variables that played into the 15-part Small Business Vitality formula.
On Monday, we looked at look concentration of small businesses— namely, the number of small businesses* (1-99 employees) in a city expressed as a ratio per 100,000 residents of that city.
Yesterday, we spotlighted the cities that had the highest percentage of private-sector jobs generated by small businesses.
Today, we look at which cities among the 106 markets studied have the most small businesses.
TOP 20: The cities with the most small businesses
1. New York: 557,293 small businesses
2. Los Angeles: 342,154
3. Chicago: 234,740
4. Miami: 180,848
5. Dallas-Fort Worth: 147,526
6. Washington, D.C.: 143,877
7. Philadelphia: 141,395
8. Atlanta: 130,649
9. Houston: 128,519
10. Boston: 121,957
11. San Francisco-Oakland: 121,373
12. Seattle: 97,198
13. Detroit: 95,302
14. Minneapolis-St. Paul: 90,985
15. Phoenix: 88,289
16. San Diego: 78,119
17. Denver: 76,277
18. St. Louis: 71,486
19. Tampa-St. Petersburg: 71,221
20. Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.: 68,869
* 2014; the most recent year for which information was available.