Missouri Small Businesses and a Low-Cost Economy 2026

Missouri’s economy does not lean on any one thing, and its small businesses are spread just as widely. The state counts 590,131 small businesses, 99.4% of every firm in it, employing about 1.1 million people, 44.4% of its workers.

The SBA records that “Missouri small businesses employed 1.1 million workers in 2022, accounting for 44.4 percent of total employment.” In the year to March 2024, small firms drove all of Missouri’s net job growth, adding 19,137 on balance while larger employers trimmed. Private employment edged up 0.5% across 2024, and new business filings broke 100,000 for the first time in 2025. What Missouri makes, moves and how cheaply you can set up here fills out the rest.

Every figure below traces to a federal agency or a Missouri state record, all named in the closing list.

Missouri’s Small Businesses, by the Count

By the SBA’s 2025 Missouri profile, the state’s 590,131 small businesses are 99.4% of all its firms, and 475,437 of them, about four in five, have no employees. The count is up from 579,040 a year earlier, a 1.9% gain.

• Missouri’s 114,694 small employer firms make up 97.2% of all its employers and pay $55.07 billion in wages, 36.8% of the state total (SUSB 2022).
• The no-payroll firms earned $25.43 billion in 2022 receipts, and 88.7% are sole proprietorships (NES 2022).
• By sheer count, the biggest small-business fields are construction (69,794), other services (68,014), professional and technical services (64,641) and real estate (59,370), with transportation and warehousing close behind at 58,901, some 92% of it owner-operators, the truckers and couriers behind Missouri’s freight role.

The Sectors That Do the Hiring

The largest private employer is health care and social assistance, 442,798 jobs, nearly a fifth of private work, and it also grew the most in 2024, adding 16,720. Retail follows at 307,582 and manufacturing at 284,855, the auto, aerospace and food base. Accommodation and food, at 263,130, pays the least of the big sectors, $25,992. Professional and technical services pays $102,944, nearly 60% above the private average, while management of companies leads every sector on pay, at $125,677. No firm is named here; the sector cells carry it. Government of all levels adds 415,241 jobs, 14.3% of Missouri employment.

• The best-paid sectors are management of companies ($125,677), utilities ($113,349) and information ($107,903).
• Professional and technical services ($102,944) and finance and insurance ($102,908) sit just behind.
• Lowest of the big sectors are accommodation and food ($25,992) and retail ($37,999); the private-sector average is $64,752.

What Missouri Makes and Moves

Manufacturing here is broad rather than built on one product. Its biggest subsector group is transportation equipment, 49,591 jobs, and within it aerospace and defense is the largest and best-paid single cell, 19,009 jobs at $125,764, the St. Louis military-aircraft cluster, up 5.0% in 2024. Motor-vehicle assembly adds 13,833 jobs and grew 7.0%, its parts suppliers another 10,161. Food processing is nearly as large, 43,953 jobs, with meat and poultry the biggest cell at 16,443, alongside the state’s old brewing base. Every figure is a sector cell, not a company.

Then there is the moving. Missouri sits where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers meet two rail-and-air hubs, St. Louis in the east and Kansas City in the west, and transportation and warehousing employs 108,650 people. Trucking is the bulk of it, 39,619 jobs, warehousing another 26,687 and growing 3.2% as distribution centers fill in around the two metros, and couriers 16,050. The growth clusters by the airports and interstates: warehousing and freight around the Kansas City airport, in Clay County, jumped more than 12% in 2024. This is a state that ships as much as it builds.

Two Metros, and the Rest of the State

Most of Missouri’s work sits at its two ends. St. Louis County is the largest by employment, 545,660 private jobs at $76,920, and neighboring St. Louis City pays the most in the state, $79,622, on its downtown health and finance cells. Jackson County anchors the Kansas City metro at 318,664 private jobs.

• Springfield’s Greene County is the southwest hub, health-care-led and a trucking-and-distribution center of its own.
• St. Charles, a fast-growing St. Louis exurb, and Clay County, by the Kansas City airport, both lean on manufacturing, which is Clay’s top private sector.
• Boone County, home to the state university in Columbia, runs heavily on government and health care.

The Jobs Missouri Gained and Lost in 2024

Private employment edged up 0.5% in 2024, a net 11,945 jobs, with the gains and losses close to balanced.

• Health care added the most, 16,720 jobs, and construction gained 3,049.
• Arts and recreation posted the fastest percentage growth, up 5.0%, and private education added 1,044.
• The largest losses were in professional and technical services, down 4,608, and administrative support, down 3,337.

Information fell fastest in percentage terms, off 3.5%, and manufacturing slipped 1,914. The office side gave back what health care and the trades picked up.

Past 100,000 New Businesses

Missouri’s new business applications have surged since 2020 and set a record in 2025. These are Census counts summed from monthly data, so the yearly totals are approximate: around 58,725 in 2018, a jump to 84,547 in 2021, then 89,446 in 2023, 85,028 in 2024, and 101,393 in 2025, the first time the state has crossed 100,000 applications in a year and about 73% above 2019. The likely-to-hire subset tells a calmer story, peaking near 28,100 in 2023 and easing to about 25,900 since.

Turnover was busy but nearly even: 28,251 establishments opened against 26,227 that closed in the year to March 2024, a net gain of 2,024. Small firms did the net hiring outright, a net 19,137 jobs, since Missouri’s larger employers were a net drag that year.

Main-Street Loans, Big-Ticket Exports

Federal small-business lending runs in two programs that moved differently in fiscal 2024. SBA 7(a) loans, for working capital, rose 16.6% in count to 1,047 while the dollars held flat at $498.1 million, and restaurants tied specialty-trade contractors for the most loans, 106 each, a Main-Street pattern. The 504 program, for buildings and equipment, contracted to 77 loans and $56.5 million before rebounding to $100.3 million in fiscal 2025. The two metros took the largest share of the money.

Exports are a big-shipper story. Identified exporters shipped $16.6 billion in goods abroad in 2023, more than the year before, yet small firms were only 26.5% of that value, $4.4 billion, despite being 83.8% of the exporters, because aerospace, vehicles, chemicals and crops leave in a few large loads.

The Owners Behind the Firms

Women own 44.5% of Missouri businesses, and urban owners outnumber rural ones about two and a half to one, 377,124 against 151,400.

• Veterans own 6.9% of businesses, 33,730 in all, above their 4.6% of the workforce.
• Black or African American owners run 56,747 businesses, a large minority-owned base for a Midwest state.
• Most of these firms have no employees; the with-payroll share runs under a fifth in nearly every group.

A $468 Billion, Many-Sided Economy

At current prices, Missouri’s output reached $468.5 billion in 2025, up from $448.7 billion in 2024. Stripping out inflation, real growth ran about 1.3% in 2025 and 1.9% in 2024, on the BEA’s figures.

What stands out is how evenly the output is spread. The biggest shares are:

• Finance, insurance and real estate, 19.6% of output, the largest single group.
• Professional and business services, 12.4%, and manufacturing, 11.5%.
• Education and health care, 10.5%, and government, 10.4%, close behind, with no one sector running away with the economy.
• Even inside manufacturing the weight is split, roughly evenly, between food and beverages, chemicals, vehicles and aerospace.

What Tourism Brings In

The Missouri Division of Tourism put direct visitor spending at $12.5 billion in fiscal 2024, from 42.4 million visitors drawn to Branson, the Lake of the Ozarks, St. Louis and Kansas City (state-agency figures; a wider total-impact estimate of $20.8 billion folds in indirect effects and is reported on its own).

The through-line is balance: a state that finances, makes, moves, heals and hosts in roughly equal measure, without a single industry it lives or dies by.

Cheap to Start, and Light on Tax

File Once, No Annual Report

Missouri is one of the cheaper states in which to open an LLC and one of the few with nothing to file afterward. You file Articles of Organization with the Missouri Secretary of State for $45 online, and that is essentially it: Missouri LLCs have no annual report and no annual fee, so the company owes the state nothing recurring to stay in good standing. A registered agent with a Missouri address is required. Our guide to starting an LLC in Missouri takes the filing step by step.

A Flat 4% Corporate Tax, and No Capital-Gains Tax

Missouri has cut business taxes hard. Corporate income is taxed at a flat 4.0%, cut from 6.25% a few years back and among the lowest of any state that levies the tax, and it reaches only companies taxed as corporations, never a standard pass-through LLC. Its top individual rate, 4.7% for 2025, is still on a downward ratchet. And in 2025 Missouri became the first state to fully exempt individual capital gains from state income tax. Sales tax begins at 4.225% from the state, with city, county and district add-ons stacked on top, and both St. Louis and Kansas City add a local earnings tax on residents and workers. The minimum wage, raised by voters, is $13.75 in 2025 and $15.00 from January 1, 2026.

A Missouri LLC does still need a registered agent based in the state, and our roundup of the registered agent services in Missouri sorts them by cost and support. For owners who would rather outsource the whole setup, our list of the best LLC services in Missouri weighs the providers on price and speed.

Missouri Small Business, Formation and Tax Questions

Sources

• The small-business counts, employment, ownership and export figures come from the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Missouri Small Business Profile.
• The 2024 employment and pay by industry, county and subsector are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
• GDP levels and the industry-share breakdown, nominal and inflation-adjusted, are the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional accounts.
• The Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics track the new-business applications, and its Nonemployer Statistics the no-employee totals.
• The 7(a) and 504 loan figures are tallied by fiscal year from the SBA’s FOIA loan files.
• LLC fees, the corporate and income tax rates, the 2025 capital-gains exemption and the sales tax are Missouri Revised Statutes and Missouri Department of Revenue figures; the minimum wage is the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations’ rate.
• Tourism figures for fiscal 2024 are the Missouri Division of Tourism’s.