Idaho Grows in People, Not Output: Small Business Data

Idaho is still gaining people faster than almost anywhere. Its population grew 1.44% in the year to July 2025, second among the 50 states behind South Carolina. Its economy, though, lost speed: real GDP rose 2.0% in 2025 after 4.5% in 2024, slipping just under the 2.1% national rate.

Business filings tell a third story. Idahoans submitted 26,846 applications for new businesses between January and August 2026, up 16.9% on the same months of 2025, yet the share expected to hire anyone keeps shrinking. Below, population estimates, payroll records, GDP accounts and the SBA state profile released in September 2026 are read side by side, to show where Idaho’s growth is real and where it is thinner than it looks.

Growing in People, Slowing in Output

The Census Bureau puts Idaho at 2,029,733 residents in July 2025, 28,861 more than a year earlier. Most of the gain came from other states: net domestic migration added 19,915 people, against 6,900 from births outnumbering deaths and 2,148 from abroad. Relative to its size, only one state drew more newcomers from elsewhere in the country.

Output did not keep pace. Measured after inflation, Idaho’s GDP grew 4.5% in 2024, tied for second among the states, then 2.0% in 2025, when 19 states grew faster. A state can keep adding residents while its economy cools, and in 2025 Idaho did both.

More Filings, Flat Hiring Plans

Business applications reached 33,267 in 2025, the most in any year since the Census Bureau’s series begins in 2005 and 6.8% more than in 2024. The Bureau flags part of each year’s applications as likely to become employers, based on signals such as a planned first payroll. That group has hardly moved:

Since 2021 the likely employers have held at about 10,400 a year while total applications climbed 15.8%. This year the gap is widening again: through August, filings expected to hire are up 5.5% and all the others are up 22.3%, to 19,018. An application is not a business, and many never open. Still, the direction is plain. Much of Idaho’s new entrepreneurship is people working for themselves.

Health Care and Builders Took 72% of 2025’s New Jobs

Private employers averaged 748,579 jobs in 2025, according to BLS payroll records for Idaho, up 13,990, or 1.9%, from 2024. Two sectors supplied about 72% of that gain: health care and social assistance with 6,686 jobs, and construction with 3,402. Hospitals grew by 3,040 jobs, or 9.6%, the largest gain of any industry at the three-digit level; outpatient care added 2,496, and specialty trade contractors 2,428.

The five industries that lost the most jobs:

• Accommodation: down 366, or 3.2%.
• Truck transportation: down 345, or 3.4%.
• Crop production: down 326, or 4.1%.
• Transportation equipment manufacturing: down 310, or 8.0%.
• General merchandise retailers: down 280, or 1.5%.

For anyone weighing what to start, that split shows where paying demand grew last year, in patient care and the building trades. It does not say which business will succeed, and no figure here can.

The same year looked different from county to county:

Ada County added 6,065 private jobs, 43% of the statewide gain, and pays the most. Bonneville went from the only one of these six counties to lose jobs in 2024, down 1.2%, to the fastest-growing in 2025. Kootenai, up 6.3% in 2024, slowed to 1.4%. Canyon is the one county here where construction outranks health care as an employer, and it also holds 10,879 manufacturing jobs. A worker in Ada earns $26,517 more a year, on average, than one in Bannock.

$247,434 in Chipmaking, $24,369 in Hospitality

The average private-sector paycheck in Idaho reached $63,240 in 2025, 5.1% above 2024. Its peak sits in one place. Semiconductor and related device makers employed 7,114 people at an average of $247,434, the highest pay of any Idaho industry with more than 1,000 workers. The wider computer and electronic products group, 10,330 jobs, averaged $212,561, 17.4% more than a year before.

Food processing employs about twice as many people as that group. Food manufacturing, which turns the state’s potato and dairy output into packaged products, averaged 21,363 jobs, slightly fewer than in 2024, at $66,233. The fastest-growing factory industry was electrical equipment, up 16.7% to 2,604 jobs.

Hospitality sits at the bottom: accommodation and food services averaged $24,369, and arts and recreation $28,966. Those averages count every job the same way whatever the hours, so part-time and seasonal work pulls them down.

The SBA’s 2026 Profile Against Last Year’s

Released in September 2026, the SBA’s new profile of Idaho repeats last year’s headline counts: 207,670 small businesses, 99.2% of Idaho’s firms, employing 386,078 people, or 56.0% of Idaho’s employees. Those rest on Census counts for 2022, the most recent available, and will not change until the next count. The lines built on newer data did move:

Net job creation is the line to watch. In the twelve months ending March 2024, small businesses added more net jobs than the state as a whole, because larger employers shed jobs on net. A year later the total had fallen 44%, to 9,412, and small businesses accounted for 61.8% of it. They are still the main source of new jobs, just no longer the only one.

Is Idaho Business-Friendly? The Costs Behind the Question

Friendliness rankings depend on who builds them and what they weigh. What the state charges is easier to pin down:

• Income tax: a flat 5.3% for individuals and corporations, down from 5.695% under House Bill 40, signed in March 2025 and applied from January 1, 2025. Corporations owe at least $20.
• Sales tax: 6% statewide, with local sales taxes limited to certain resort cities.
• Grocery credit: $155 per person, up from $120, to offset the sales tax on food.
• Forming an LLC: $100 for a Certificate of Organization filed online, $120 on paper.
• Annual report: filed yearly, in the calendar month the LLC was first registered, at no charge when filed online.
• Minimum wage: $7.25 an hour, the federal floor, and $3.35 in cash wages for tipped staff.

Filing the Certificate of Organization through SOSBiz takes seven steps, laid out in our Idaho LLC filing steps. Every fee from formation onward is itemized on what an Idaho LLC costs to form and keep. Co-owners can begin with a free Idaho operating agreement template.

Quick Answers for Anyone Starting Out in Idaho

Sources

• SBA Office of Advocacy: the 2026 Idaho Small Business Profile, compared line by line with the 2025 edition.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: QCEW 2025 annual averages for Idaho and six of its largest counties, private ownership.
• Census Bureau: Vintage 2025 state population estimates, including the components of change.
• Bureau of Economic Analysis: real GDP by state, 2024 and 2025.
• Census Bureau: Business Formation Statistics, monthly Idaho series through August 2026.
• State of Idaho: the Tax Commission for income tax, sales tax and the grocery credit; the Secretary of State for LLC and annual report fees; the Department of Labor for wage rules; the Legislature for House Bill 40 (2025).