Nebraska Small Business Statistics: a 2026 Rundown

Two industries you rarely see credited by name drive Nebraska’s private payroll: the meatpacking plants inside manufacturing, the state’s second-largest employer, and Omaha’s insurance and finance houses. Around them stand 193,495 small businesses, 99.1% of all Nebraska companies and the workplace for 422,756 people, 47.5% of the state’s jobs.

The SBA notes that 47.5% share ran above the national small business level in 2022, and in the latest year small firms did more than all of the state’s net hiring, out-adding the economy as a whole. Private employment grew 0.9% in 2024, and new business applications hit a series high in 2025.

What follows is sourced entirely to federal agencies and Nebraska’s own statutes and departments, all named at the end.

Small Firms Across the Nebraska Economy

The SBA’s 2025 Nebraska profile puts the state at 193,495 small businesses, 99.1% of roughly 195,300 companies, about 4,800 more than a year earlier.

• 43,375 small employer firms, 96.1% of Nebraska’s employers, together paid $20.4 billion in wages in 2022, 40.4% of the state total.
• The solo side runs to 150,120 nonemployer businesses, $8.51 billion in 2022 receipts, 84.8% of them sole proprietorships.
• For 2024 the BLS logged 73,388 private establishments, or 76,834 counting government.
• By firm count with solo ventures, construction leads at 23,293, and transportation and warehousing is close behind at 18,129, most of them owner-operators, the Nebraska freight signature.

What Nebraska’s Payrolls Look Like

Health care and social assistance employs the most Nebraskans in the private sector, 138,733 jobs, about 16.3% of the private total, adding 5,812 jobs in 2024, the biggest gain anywhere. Manufacturing is a close second at 104,358, unusual weight for a farm state and built largely on food processing; retail is barely behind at 104,192. Accommodation and food services, fourth at 82,946, pays the least. No public dataset ranks Nebraska’s employers by name; the pay cells stand in for them.

• Utilities pays far and away the most, $191,916 a year on average, ahead of management of companies ($112,289) and finance and insurance ($97,009).
• Professional services and information both average $90,703.
• The lowest averages are accommodation and food at $22,584, arts and recreation at $24,808 and retail at $36,515, against a statewide private mean of $60,998.

Manufacturing and finance are the two big sectors where large firms, not small ones, hold most of the jobs, 29.4% and 27.7% small-business by employment; construction, at 86.5%, is the reverse.

Meatpacking and Omaha Finance, in the Cells

Manufacturing’s largest slice is food, 41,595 jobs, and inside that, animal slaughtering and processing alone runs 31,221 jobs at $59,006, close to 30% of all Nebraska manufacturing. Grain and oilseed milling adds a smaller, higher-paid cell at $99,246. No plant is named here.

Finance and insurance holds 52,597 jobs statewide at $97,009, and Douglas County, which is Omaha, accounts for 43.5% of them. Insurance carriers and related work make up 24,918 of the jobs, and a separate corporate-headquarters cell, management of companies, pays $112,289. No carrier or firm is named either.

One Nebraska signature the data will not show is rail: its employment cell is withheld for confidentiality statewide and in every county, surfacing only inside the broader transportation and warehousing total of 42,309 jobs.

So the industries that define Nebraska to the outside world, meatpacking, insurance, the railroads, are the ones that reach the page as cells and totals rather than names: their scale visible, their giants anonymous.

Nebraska’s Jobs by County

County figures cover private employers, with government flagged where it looms; roughly one Nebraska job in six is a government job. Douglas County, which holds Omaha, is a third of the private economy by itself, 297,788 jobs, 34.9% of the state, at the top private pay of the five profiled here, $67,692, and it was the only one of the five to shrink in 2024, down 0.7% on losses in administrative, professional and finance work.

• Lancaster County, home to Lincoln, the capital and the state university, carries 141,222 private jobs and the largest government slice of the five, 19.5%.
• Sarpy County, around Bellevue with an Air Force base and a distribution corridor, led the five in growth, up 2.7%.
• Hall County, at Grand Island, leans on meatpacking, with manufacturing at 26.0% of its private jobs.
• Buffalo County, around Kearney, is led by health care and its university.

Fremont’s Meatpacking Concentration

In Dodge County, at Fremont, animal slaughtering is 2,599 jobs, 16.0% of the county’s private employment, a heavier meatpacking share than any of the five counties profiled above. Cells only, no plant named.

The five profiled counties hold about 66% of Nebraska’s private jobs, clustered along the Omaha-Lincoln-Bellevue line and the Grand Island and Kearney hubs; the rest spreads thin across a wide farm-and-ranch state.

Where Nebraska Hired and Where It Cut, 2024

Private employment rose 0.9% in 2024, a net 7,548 jobs. The tally is a record of what happened, not counsel: where the hiring landed, then where it fell away.

• The fastest percentage gain among sizeable sectors went to arts and recreation, up 5.3% (849 jobs).
• Health care added the most in raw numbers, 5,812 jobs, a 4.4% rise, and other services grew 3.6%.
• Accommodation and food gained 2.6% and construction 2.0%.

The losses concentrated in offices, not shop floors: administrative and waste services fell hardest, down 2,781 jobs and 5.2%, and professional and technical services shed 980, most of it a 10.6% drop in computer systems design; retail, wholesale and manufacturing each eased by under a point. For a year, the desks lost ground while the wards, worksites and dining rooms gained.

Nebraska’s Business Filings, One Dip and a New High

Nebraska’s new-business applications, which the Census tracks monthly and this page totals by year, have mostly climbed since the pandemic. They ran near 16,500 in 2018, dipped in 2019, reached 19,438 in 2021, and rose to 21,538 by 2023 before stepping back in 2024 to 20,862 and rebounding to a series high of 22,876 in 2025, roughly 53% above 2019. The yearly numbers are approximations.

The turnover underneath stayed net positive but thinned: 7,158 establishments opened against 6,668 closures in the year to March 2024, a net 490. The striking part is the jobs split, small businesses added 12,739 on net while the whole economy added 12,052, so small firms accounted for slightly more than all of the state’s net hiring, with large employers a net drag that window.

How Nebraska Borrowed and Shipped in 2024

The SBA’s flagship loan program surged in fiscal 2024 while its two smaller ones shrank, and Nebraska’s export total came down from the year before.

Where the Three Loan Programs Diverged

SBA lenders wrote 368 7(a) loans in fiscal 2024 for $160.6 million, a jump of 24.7% in count and 52.5% in dollars from a year earlier, counting 7(a) on its own.

• The 504 program moved the other way, its loan count off 25.8% to 23, though the dollars held nearly flat at $35.2 million (down 0.2%).
• Microloans eased to 60, down 32.6% in count and 4.8% in dollars; the three programs together came to about 391 loans and $195.8 million, no single trend covering them.
• By district, the Omaha area (NE-02) wrote the most loans while the Lincoln and eastern district (NE-01) drew the most dollars.
• Community Reinvestment Act data adds $517.9 million lent to Nebraska firms with revenues under $1 million in 2023, down from $645.3 million in 2022.

Big Firms Carry Nebraska’s Exports

Nebraska counted 1,753 identified exporters in 2023, shipping $7.7 billion of goods, down from $8.6 billion in 2022. Small firms are most of the exporters, 1,415 of them, 80.7%, but their $1.5 billion is only 19.7% of the value, a low share that barely moved from the prior year, a sign the state’s big agricultural-commodity shippers dominate the dollars.

Nebraska’s Owners, Between City and Country

Nebraska’s ownership base sits between town and country: rural addresses account for 28.5% of its classifiable businesses, 48,862 against 122,351 urban, per the 2022 Census figures, the split of an Omaha-Lincoln metro with a broad farm-and-ranch hinterland.

• Women own 44.0% of Nebraska businesses, 7,494 of the employer firms and 7,103 more owned equally with men.
• Veterans own 7.2% of businesses against 4.9% of the workforce, 11,224 in all, 2,224 with employees.
• Owners of Hispanic origin hold 7.4% of businesses (12,925, of which 1,425 employ staff); Black-owned firms number 8,540 and Asian-owned 6,736, all 2022 figures.

Statewide GDP and a 2023 Travel Rebound

Nebraska’s output grew about 1.4% in real terms in 2025, after 0.6% in 2024; in current dollars it reached $198.1 billion, up from $189.2 billion, per federal accounts.

Nebraska’s 2023 Travel Economy

The Nebraska Tourism Commission’s 2023 study, prepared by Dean Runyan, tallies the travel economy.

• Direct travel spending reached $4.6 billion in 2023, up 6.0%, though only 3.8% after inflation, so much of the gain was price rather than volume, the report notes.
• The spending supported 41,250 direct travel jobs and produced $322.1 million in direct state and local travel taxes.
• With secondary effects, the total travel-supported job count rises to 60,190; Douglas and Lancaster counties drew the most spending.

Starting and Keeping a Nebraska LLC

Forming a Nebraska LLC still involves a newspaper notice, and the recurring report comes only every other year.

The $100 Filing, Then a Newspaper Notice

The formation document is a Certificate of Organization, not Articles of Organization, submitted to the Secretary of State for $100 online or $110 on paper. Then comes the newspaper step: a notice of organization published for three successive weeks in a legal newspaper near the designated office, with proof filed back with the state. Reserving a name costs $30. For the whole path, our guide to starting an LLC in Nebraska covers every stage, the newspaper notice included.

Every Nebraska LLC also names a registered agent and a designated office in the state. The recurring filing is not annual: it is a biennial report, due by April 1 in odd-numbered years, a $10 fee. Owners weighing that decision can compare the registered agent services in Nebraska we rate on price and support.

Owners set on delegating the whole job can consult our review of the best LLC services in Nebraska, scored on cost and speed.

A Tax Rate on a Countdown

Nebraska’s personal income tax is graduated and falling on a fixed schedule set by a 2023 law: its top rate is 5.20% for 2025 and 4.55% for 2026, on the way to 3.99% in 2027. The corporate rate steps down on the same path.

• Sales tax is 5.5% at the state level, and Nebraska lets cities and counties add up to 2% more, so combined rates reach 7.5%.
• Groceries go untaxed, but prepared and restaurant meals are not.
• The minimum wage is $13.50 in 2025 and $15.00 in 2026, set by a 2022 voter initiative and indexed to inflation after that; the tipped cash wage is $2.13.

A notice in the paper to begin, a report only every other year, and an income tax counting itself down to 3.99%: Nebraska’s rules are unusual in shape but light in frequency.

Nebraska Filing and Tax FAQs

Sources

• Counts, dynamics, ownership and export figures trace to the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Nebraska Small Business Profile.
• The 2024 sector, subsector and county cells are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
• The Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics carry the monthly applications, and its Nonemployer Statistics the solo businesses.
• Fiscal 2024 loan totals were built from the SBA’s 7(a) and 504 FOIA datasets.
• Both GDP measures are the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional accounts‘.
• The Certificate of Organization fee, the newspaper-publication rule and the biennial report come from the Nebraska Secretary of State (statutes 21-117, 21-193 and 21-125).
• The income, corporate and sales tax rates follow the Nebraska Department of Revenue and its notice of 2023 legislative changes.
• The $13.50 and $15.00 minimum-wage steps trace to Nebraska’s 2022 voter initiative.
• The 2023 travel figures are the Nebraska Tourism Commission’s, from its Dean Runyan economic-impact study.