Indiana Small Business Statistics and Data for 2026

Manufacturing dominates Indiana, employing 523,146 people, 18.8% of the state’s private workforce, at pay 25.2% above the private average. Around it operate 591,671 small businesses, 99.4% of all Indiana companies, giving work to 1.2 million people, 43.2% of the workforce.

The formation wave here crested early. New business applications peaked at about 93,441 in 2023, the high of the Census series, then eased 3.3% in 2024 and another 0.7% in 2025, still roughly 67% above where 2019 stood. The ground-level numbers stayed positive through it: a net 530 more establishments opened than closed between March 2023 and March 2024, and private employment added 0.4% in 2024.

Every figure on this page comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis or an Indiana state agency, all linked in the sources at the end.

Indiana by Two Counts: the SBA’s and the State’s

The federal count first. The latest SBA state profile for Indiana lists 591,671 small businesses, up from 569,851 in the 2024 edition; with large firms added, the state holds about 595,000 businesses in total.

Indiana also keeps its own tally. The Secretary of State’s Business Services Division reported 658,059 active registered entities at the end of 2023, a register of everything filed with the state and therefore a different measure from the SBA’s business count; it processed 499,587 filings that year, 98% of new-business filings arriving online through INBiz.

• 591,671 small businesses operate in Indiana, 99.4% of all businesses in the state.
• Their payrolls cover 1.2 million Hoosiers, 43.2% of the state’s workers.
• 110,750 small employer firms make up 96.9% of Indiana employers and paid $59.4 billion in wages, 37.6% of the state’s payroll (2022 data).
• The no-staff side runs deep: 480,921 nonemployer businesses earned $24.6 billion in 2022 receipts, and 422,876 of them, about 87.9%, are sole proprietorships.

The Indiana Wage Table for 2024

The averages below take in every private employer in the state, whatever its size.

• A typical private-sector year of work paid $63,314 in 2024.
• Management of companies tops the table at $120,084, ahead of utilities ($117,896), professional services ($97,941) and finance and insurance ($93,284).
• Manufacturing averages $79,292, which puts the state’s dominant sector about 25.2% above the private average.
• The low rungs: accommodation and food services at $23,449 and retail at $37,509.

County pay tells its own story: Marion at $76,777 and Hamilton at $76,618 sit nearly tied on top, with Lake at $62,316 and Allen at $60,303 (private-sector averages).

What Business Dominates Indiana? The Numbers Answer

Manufacturing, and it is not close. The sector employed 523,146 people in 2024, about 18.8% of Indiana’s private workforce, and its $41.5 billion in wages amounted to roughly 23.6% of all private pay in the state. Its lead over second-place health care runs to 72,232 jobs. The same cells carry the caveat: manufacturing also posted the biggest decline of 2024, down 9,900 jobs, or 1.9%.

• Health care and social assistance is second with 450,914 jobs, and it added 16,200 in 2024, the biggest gain of any sector.
• By establishment count, professional, scientific and technical services leads with 26,710 locations.
• Small business runs the factory floor more than you might guess: 6,223 of Indiana’s manufacturing employers, 90.2%, are small firms, employing 166,240 people, 31.5% of the sector (2022 data).
• Counting firms of every size including solo ventures, transportation and warehousing is the state’s second-largest small-business industry at 70,480 firms, the Crossroads-of-America logistics base showing up in the data.

Indiana’s 2024 Ups and Downs by Industry

Construction set the pace, growing 4.4% and adding 7,113 jobs, with health care close behind at 3.7% and 16,200 new positions; arts and recreation rose 3.6% and other services 2.3%.

On the down side, administrative and waste services fell hardest in percentage terms, off 4.7% and 8,433 jobs, while manufacturing’s 1.9% dip cost the most positions outright. Net it out and private employment finished 0.4% higher, up 12,364 jobs.

The Counties Doing Indiana’s Heavy Lifting

County totals below cover all private employers, from single desks to full campuses. Marion County, which holds Indianapolis, counts 28,164 private establishments and 548,002 jobs, about 19.7% of the state; health care leads there with 106,311 jobs, construction grew fastest among its sizeable sectors at 6.2%, and manufacturing pay averages a remarkable $128,360, roughly 67% above the county norm, the life-sciences wage premium showing through the data. About 12.4% of the county’s total employment is government work.

• Hamilton County grew fastest of the four profiled, up 1.8%; its professional services pay an average $161,242, about two and a half times the state private average, the mark of a suburban headquarters corridor.
• Allen County around Fort Wayne runs health-first, with 38,417 health care jobs and manufacturing at 16.2% of its private employment.
• Lake County in the northwest pays factory wages of $107,985 on average, about 73% above the county norm, the steel-belt premium in a single cell.

Even so, about 62% of the state’s private jobs sit beyond these four counties; Indianapolis explains a lot in Indiana, never the whole.

Indiana’s Filing Peak Came Early

Annual totals below add up monthly Census figures, so read them as close approximations. Indiana logged about 52,253 new business applications in 2018, surged to 87,076 in 2021, dipped in 2022, and reached its series high of 93,441 in 2023. Since then the count has eased twice, to about 90,375 in 2024 and 89,768 in 2025, which still leaves filings roughly 67% above their 2019 level.

The churn stayed constructive meanwhile. From March 2023 to March 2024, 16,993 establishments opened against 16,463 closures across businesses of every size (temporary closures and reopenings counted), a net gain of 530, and the state added 16,876 jobs on net; the SBA profile credits small businesses with a net 23,008 over the window, more than the total, which the underlying accounting permits when large firms run negative. Two gentle down years after an early peak reads less like a boom ending than a cruising altitude being held.

Loan Programs and Export Markets in Indiana

The two stories point in different directions this year: lending grew across every program, while export growth belonged mostly to the big players.

Growth Across All Three SBA Programs

SBA lenders approved 1,321 7(a) loans worth $588.0 million in Indiana in fiscal 2024, about 10.8% more loans and 19.3% more dollars than the year before. The 504 program rose too, to 104 loans and $112.9 million, up 8.3% and 21.5% respectively, and microloans nearly doubled, from 88 to 170. Combined, the programs delivered about 1,425 loans and $700.9 million.

• Under the Community Reinvestment Act, banks issued $1.4 billion in new loans to Indiana firms with revenues of $1 million or less in 2023, down from $1.6 billion in 2022.

The Large-Firm Tilt in Indiana Exports

Indiana’s identified exports jumped $9.1 billion in a year, from $42.9 billion in 2022 to $52.0 billion in 2023. Small firms did not drive the surge: 7,044 of the 8,407 identified exporters, 83.8%, are small, but their $7.0 billion in shipments works out to a 13.4% share of the value, down from 16.0% the year before.

Census Findings on Indiana Ownership

Two universes mix below: employer firms from the 2022 Census business survey, and totals that fold in solo businesses.

• Women own 44.1% of Indiana businesses; 20,251 employer firms are female-owned and 12,417 more are owned equally by women and men.
• Veterans own 5.8% of businesses against 4.4% of the workforce: about 29,838 businesses, 5,338 with employees.
• Owners of Hispanic origin account for 5.9% of Indiana businesses (32,461 in all, 2,961 with staff); 61,431 businesses are Black-owned (2,431 employer firms) and 29,118 Asian-owned (6,118).
• 156,244 Indiana businesses are rural versus 389,288 urban, about 28.6% of the classifiable total.

The Macro View From Indiana

Indiana produced $545.23 billion in goods and services in 2025 at current prices, up from $519.52 billion in 2024. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, the economy grew about 2.5%, per federal economic accounts.

A Record Crowd for Indiana Tourism in 2024

The state’s 2024 tourism assessment reports a milestone: visitation finally passed its 2019 peak.

• 83.3 million visitors came in 2024, up 1.9% and past the previous 2019 record of 82.7 million, per the study.
• They spent $16.9 billion (up 4.7%), and the study notes inflation-adjusted spending topped pre-pandemic levels for the first time.
• Visitor activity supported 210,223 jobs, about 5.0% of Indiana’s nonfarm jobs, and produced $3.2 billion in total taxes, $1.1 billion of it to the state.
• The standout segment was business travel, up 10.1% on the year.

Indiana Costs: a Biennial Report and a Shrinking Flat Tax

Two Indiana quirks are worth knowing before you file: the entity report is biennial, not annual, and the flat income tax keeps stepping down.

Indiana LLC Fees via INBiz

LLCs file with the Secretary of State’s Business Services Division, almost always through the INBiz portal.

• Registering an LLC online costs $96 all-in per the Secretary of State’s own fee table (that includes a $20 enhanced access fee), or $100 by mail on the paper form.
• The business entity report is biennial: $32 online or $50 on paper, first due two years after formation and then every other year by the end of your anniversary month; skipping it risks administrative dissolution.
• An amendment runs $21 online, and every LLC needs an Indiana registered agent at a physical in-state address.

The whole sequence, from name search to that first biennial report, is mapped in our guide to starting an LLC in Indiana.

The 2.95% Flat Rate, Plus Your County’s Cut

Most owners pay the personal rate on business income, and in Indiana that rate comes in two layers.

• The state income tax is a flat 2.95% for 2026, and the Department of Revenue already lists the next step: 2.90% in 2027.
• Every one of Indiana’s 92 counties adds its own income tax, from 0.5% to 3.0% in 2026; Marion County (Indianapolis) charges 2.02%, Hamilton 1.1%, Allen 1.59% and Lake 1.5%, per the DOR’s county rate table.
• Corporations pay a flat 4.9%, a rate in place since July 2021 after stepping down from 8.5% in 2012.
• Sales tax is 7% statewide, unchanged since 2008, and the DOR publishes a single state rate; separate local food-and-beverage and innkeeper’s taxes apply to specific transactions in adopting jurisdictions.
• The minimum wage is $7.25, with a $2.13 cash wage for tipped workers whose tips must lift them to at least $7.25.

The entity report arrives every other year, and the tax rate already has its next cut on the calendar.

Indiana Small Business Q&A

Sources

• Counts, dynamics, ownership and export data are anchored in the SBA Office of Advocacy, Indiana 2025 Small Business Profile.
• Sector and county figures for 2024, from jobs to pay, come out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
• Application and solo-business series belong to the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics and Nonemployer Statistics.
• Loan totals for fiscal 2024 were computed from U.S. Small Business Administration loan program data.
• GDP levels and the real-growth estimate come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts.
• Registry statistics and the $96 online filing cost are printed in the Indiana Secretary of State’s own regulatory analysis.
• Income, corporate and sales tax facts follow the Indiana Department of Revenue.
• Visitor counts, spending and tourism jobs are reported in the Indiana Destination Development Corporation’s tourism research.