Small Business Statistics Behind Delaware’s 2.3M Companies

Delaware is the legal home of more than 2.28 million registered companies, better than two for every resident, and 66.7% of the Fortune 500 among them, yet only about 111,000 small businesses actually operate inside the state. The distance between those two numbers is the most interesting thing about Delaware, and most of this page is spent telling them apart.

The 2.28 million figure is a registry: legal entities filed with the Delaware Division of Corporations, the great majority of which keep no office, no payroll and no customers in the state. The real in-state economy is far smaller and looks like any small state’s, health care and retail and restaurants, with a beach county and a poultry industry alongside. The SBA reports that “Delaware small business employment grew by 30.4 percent between 1998 and 2022, which exceeded the national small business employment growth rate,” and three-quarters of the jobs the state added in the latest year on record came from small firms. This page takes the pieces in turn: what Delaware registers, the work it actually does, and the bill to set up here.

Every number below comes from federal statistical agencies and the State of Delaware’s own filings, each credited in the list at the end.

Why 2.28 Million Companies Register in Delaware

At the end of 2025, 2,287,728 business entities sat on the Delaware register, up 6.0% in a year. Against a resident population near 1.05 million, the sixth smallest in the country, that is more than two registered companies for every Delawarean. In 2025 alone the state took in 334,461 new formations, up 15.4% on the year, with corporations the fastest-rising slice.

• The limited liability company is the vehicle of choice: 235,393 of the 2025 formations, 70.4%, were LLCs, with 74,716 corporations, 21,189 limited partnerships and 3,163 statutory trusts making up the rest.
• About 66.7% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware, and the large majority of US companies that go public each year choose it as their legal home.
• The pull is legal, not economic: the Court of Chancery hears business disputes without juries before judges who specialize in corporate law, and the Delaware General Corporation Law is the most tested, most predictable body of company law in the country.

None of that requires setting foot in the state. A company can be chartered in Delaware, run from anywhere, and never employ a single person here. So the register says almost nothing about the economy Delawareans actually work in, which is where the rest of this page goes.

The Small Businesses That Actually Operate Here

Set the register aside and Delaware’s own small-business base is modest and ordinary. The SBA’s 2025 profile counts 111,346 small businesses, 98.7% of every firm in the state, employing 214,539 people, 50.6% of the private workforce. Most are tiny: 88,530, close to 80% of them, keep no payroll.

• Only 22,816 of them actually employ anyone, 19,849 with fewer than 20 workers and 2,967 in the 20-to-499 range, and between them they met a $13.0 billion payroll in 2022.
• In the year to March 2024, Delaware establishments added a net 6,992 jobs, and small businesses were behind 5,323 of them, roughly 76%.
• This is a separate universe from the 2.28 million registrations above. These are the firms with a Delaware address, a Delaware landlord and Delaware customers.

What Delaware Does for a Living

By headcount, Delaware works in health care. The sector employs 78,754 people, more than any other and growing 6.1% in 2024, well ahead of retail (51,184), with finance and insurance (43,784) and restaurants and hotels (43,751) close behind in third and fourth. Professional and technical services run the most separate establishments of any sector, 9,297 of them, a measure of how many small consultancies and solo practices file here. Counting every level, government adds about 67,600 jobs, with an outsized state payroll up in Dover.

Where the corporate-haven side of Delaware surfaces is in pay, not headcount. Finance and insurance sits only third by employment but pays $129,518 a year, and the management-of-companies cell, the holding companies, tops every sector at $165,927, on just 7,735 jobs. The statewide private average is $72,500. The gap between that average and the finance and holding-company cells is the closest the jobs data comes to showing the two-million-entity register.

• The highest-paying cells are management of companies ($165,927), utilities ($135,570) and finance and insurance ($129,518).
• The floor is in restaurants and hotels ($27,058) and arts and recreation ($29,762), with retail at $39,581.
• Professional and technical services, at $125,737, is another six-figure cell, and it is where most of those 9,297 establishments sit.

Three Counties, Three Economies

Delaware has only three counties, and they divide the work cleanly. New Castle, at the top of the state around Wilmington and Newark, is the core: 303,806 jobs, about 64% of all employment in Delaware, at the highest average pay anywhere in the state, $80,334, and it holds the finance cell that pays $133,584.

• Kent County, in the middle, is built around Dover and the state government: state agencies alone employ 12,169 people there, about one in six of the county’s jobs.
• Sussex County, in the south, grew fastest of the three in 2024, up 3.8%. Its biggest employer is not health care but the beach economy, 14,617 restaurant and hotel jobs along the Atlantic coast.
• Sussex also carries the state’s largest food-manufacturing workforce, 11,376 jobs in poultry and broiler processing, the one place Delaware’s farm economy shows up in a payroll.

The Businesses Delawareans Actually Start

Set the register beside the number of people actually trying to start something in Delaware and the paradox sharpens. In 2025 the state logged about 60,132 new business applications, the federal tax-ID filings that signal a real intent to operate, of which roughly 20,799 were the high-propensity kind most likely to hire. That total has climbed steadily, from about 44,752 in 2021, and even so it lands an order of magnitude below the 334,461 entities the Division of Corporations registered the same year. Most of what Delaware charters, in other words, is paperwork for businesses that will do their operating somewhere else.

Who the Owners Are

Ownership in Delaware tilts the way it does in most states, with some local texture. Women own 43.5% of Delaware businesses and are 48.8% of its workers, veterans own 6.3%, and Hispanic owners hold 8.3%. One figure stands out: Asian-owned firms are the likeliest of any group to have employees rather than run solo, 31.2% of them. Black-owned businesses number 18,686. As nearly everywhere, most owners in every group run a firm with no payroll.

Loans In, Goods Out

Federal small-business lending had its strongest recent year in Delaware. The SBA’s 7(a) program, the working-capital loan, backed 275 loans worth $91.8 million in fiscal 2025, up from 196 loans and $74.7 million two years earlier. The separate 504 program, for buildings and equipment, is tiny here, eight loans and $6.3 million.

Delaware’s exporters are mostly small; its export dollars are not. In 2023, 2,170 Delaware firms shipped $4.2 billion in goods abroad. Small businesses were 87.4% of those exporters but accounted for only 21.1% of the value, about $878 million, because a handful of large chemical and pharmaceutical shippers carry most of the rest.

Finance Runs a $117 Billion Economy

Delaware turns out about $111,600 of output per resident, high for the country, on a total economy worth $117.2 billion in 2025 at current prices, up from $111.0 billion in 2024. In real terms, the economy grew about 2.3%. The reason the per-resident figure runs so high sits in one industry. Finance and insurance produce 25.8% of Delaware’s output, $30.2 billion, and real estate another 19.9%. Together, at 45.7% of GDP, they tower over a finance sector that ranks only third in jobs. The corporate economy that barely registers in Delaware’s headcount dominates its dollars.

After those two, the largest slices of output are government (8.6%), health care (7.7%) and manufacturing (6.9%), the ordinary economy filling in beneath the finance towers.

What the Beaches Bring In

The one part of Delaware’s real economy that punches above the state’s size is the shore. In 2023 Delaware drew 29.3 million visitors who spent more than $7 billion and supported 55,240 jobs, with the Sussex beach towns at the center of it. For a state famous for corporate charters, a good share of the people actually at work in Delaware are serving visitors on the coast.

Forming a Company, and the Franchise Tax

Setting Up an LLC

A Delaware LLC starts with one filing, the Certificate of Formation, lodged with the Division of Corporations for $110, plus a registered agent holding a physical Delaware address, which is what lets non-residents charter here at all. After that a Delaware LLC files no annual report; it owes a single flat franchise tax of $300 every June 1, whatever its size or income. If you would rather do it yourself, our guide to starting an LLC in Delaware lays out the Certificate and that first $300 bill step by step.

Corporations, and How Delaware Taxes Business

A corporation is treated differently. It owes a $50 annual report and a franchise tax that starts at $175 and runs up to $200,000, or $250,000 for the largest corporate filers, both due by March 1 rather than June. On income, Delaware charges residents a top personal rate of 6.60% and businesses an 8.7% corporate income tax, but only on income actually earned in the state, so a holding company that merely manages investments from a Delaware charter owes none of it. That exemption is the quiet engine behind the whole register.

Delaware is also one of five states with no sales tax, though it makes up the revenue with a gross receipts tax charged to sellers on their total revenue, from about 0.0945% to 1.99% by activity, rather than to shoppers at the register. The minimum wage is $15.00 an hour, with a $2.23 cash floor for tipped workers. Every Delaware company also needs a registered agent to stay in good standing; our reviews rank Delaware’s registered agent services, and for anyone who would sooner hand off the paperwork, a companion guide weighs the best LLC services in Delaware by cost and turnaround.

What People Ask About Delaware Companies

Sources

• For the small-business side, the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Delaware Small Business Profile supplied the firm counts, payroll, ownership, lending and export figures.
• Jobs, establishments and pay across Delaware’s industries and its three counties for 2024 sit in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
• The count of registered entities, new formations, the Fortune 500 share and the filing fees are published by the Delaware Division of Corporations.
• Two Census Bureau series round out the picture: the Business Formation Statistics behind the application counts and the Nonemployer Statistics behind the one-person-firm totals.
• State output, in current and inflation-adjusted dollars, is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional accounts, and the 7(a) and 504 loan totals from the SBA’s FOIA loan data.
• The franchise tax, income-tax and gross-receipts rules are the Delaware Division of Revenue’s and Division of Corporations’, and the minimum wage the Delaware Division of Industrial Affairs’.
• Visitor spending and tourism employment for 2023 are the Delaware Tourism Office’s.