North Dakota’s Small Businesses and Resource Economy 2026

North Dakota’s economy rests on two things pulled from the ground, oil and crops, and its small businesses fill in almost everything around them. The state counts 78,219 small businesses, 98.8% of all its firms, and they employ 197,212 people, 57.6% of its workforce, a clear majority.

The SBA reports that “North Dakota small business employment grew by 20.7 percent between 1998 and 2022, which exceeded the national small business employment growth rate.” In the year to March 2024, small firms added a net 6,358 jobs, more than the state’s all-sizes total, meaning large employers shed jobs on balance and small ones carried the whole gain. Private employment rose 1.7% in 2024, and new business filings held near their post-boom high. The oil economy that sets the state apart gets its own section below.

The numbers on this page come only from federal agencies and North Dakota state offices, each named in the list at the bottom.

Where North Dakota’s Small Businesses Stand

By the SBA’s 2025 North Dakota profile, the state’s 78,219 small businesses are 98.8% of all its firms, and 59,106 of them, about three in four, have no employees. The count is up from 76,290 a year earlier, a 2.5% gain.

• The 19,113 small firms with employees are 95.1% of North Dakota’s employers and carry a $10.70 billion payroll, 52.6% of the state total (SUSB 2022).
• The no-payroll firms earned $3.78 billion in 2022 receipts; 83.2% are sole proprietorships, but an unusually high 13.4% are partnerships, the mark of farm, ranch and mineral-royalty arrangements (NES 2022).
• Construction carries the state’s largest small-firm payroll, $1.60 billion, ahead of every other sector, even though health care and accommodation employ more small-firm workers, a direct product of the oil and farm build-out.

What Employs North Dakota

Health care and social assistance is the largest private employer, 64,172 jobs, about 18% of private work, and it added 1,885 in 2024. Retail follows at 45,720 and accommodation and food at 34,051, the lowest pay among big sectors at $23,927. Construction, at 29,118, was the fastest-growing large sector in 2024, up 6.9%, and manufacturing sits close behind at 28,225. Mining ranks only seventh by headcount, 18,213 jobs, but out-pays every other sector, and the industry cells carry the detail without naming a single operator. Counting all levels, government is a large 74,621 jobs, 17.4% of North Dakota employment.

• The best-paid sectors are mining ($131,795), utilities ($127,058) and management of companies ($120,048).
• Wholesale trade ($87,831) and professional and technical services ($90,955) sit well above the field too.
• Lowest of all are arts and recreation ($22,648) and accommodation and food ($23,927); the private-sector average is $67,001.

The Oil Economy in the West

Mining, which in North Dakota means the Bakken oil fields, is 18,213 jobs at $131,795, about 5% of private employment on its own and the best-paid sector in the state. The extraction cell itself is small and richly paid, 2,619 jobs at $172,637, the highest-paying cell anywhere in North Dakota. The real weight sits in oilfield services, the drilling, completion and workover work that support activities for mining covers, 13,508 jobs at around $126,000, nearly three-quarters of all mining employment. The drilling-wells cell is too concentrated to disclose, so the services totals stand in for it, and no service company is named.

The oil work is a western story. Williams County, around Williston, has mining as its number-one private employer, 7,796 jobs at $140,011, and McKenzie County, around Watford City, posts the highest private pay of any county in the state, $100,943. Stark and Ward counties carry more of the same. Set against a statewide private average of $67,001, Williston’s $95,078 is a 42% premium, the clearest measure of what oil pays.

An Eastern Service Belt and a Western Oil Belt

North Dakota splits cleanly in two. The east holds the population and the service jobs; the west holds the oil and the high wages.

• Cass County, around Fargo, is the largest by far, 113,690 private jobs at $66,852, led by health care (22,662) and a manufacturing base (10,956).
• Burleigh County holds Bismarck, the capital, where roughly one job in five is government; Grand Forks pairs a university and an air base with a health-care core.
• The western oil counties run hot: mining tops the list in Williams (7,796 jobs) and Stark (2,762), still out-pays every sector in Ward (1,513), and construction in Williston grew 13.1% in 2024.

What Grew and Shrank in 2024

Private employment rose 1.7% in 2024, a net 5,781 jobs, and the gains were concentrated in the trades and care work.

• Health care added the most, 1,885 jobs, and construction nearly matched it at 1,872, up 6.9%.
• Wholesale trade gained 652 and management of companies rose 6.7%.
• Food manufacturing grew 6.3%, a sign of value being added to the state’s crops.

The declines were on the office and support side: administrative and support work fell 3.6%, the largest single loss at 487 jobs, information dropped 4.5% and finance and insurance 2.0%. What the state built and grew expanded; what it processed at a desk contracted.

New Filings on a Post-Boom Plateau

North Dakota’s new business applications climbed with the Bakken boom and have settled onto a plateau since. The Census counts them monthly and the annual figure sums those months, so treat it as an estimate: roughly 8,622 in 2018, a dip to 6,877 in 2019 and 6,648 in 2020, then a rebound to a steady 8,000-to-9,000 band from 2021 on, 9,005 in 2023, the recent high, 8,455 in 2024, and 8,912 in 2025, about 30% above 2019. The likely-to-hire share peaked at 3,091 in 2023 and has eased to around 2,880 since.

Turnover ran steady underneath: 3,199 establishments opened against 2,787 that closed in the year to March 2024, a net gain of 412. Small firms did all the net hiring and then some, a net 6,358 jobs, which topped the state’s all-sizes total, so the growth engine was entirely small.

Small Loans, and Exports That Dwarf Them

Federal small-business lending in North Dakota is modest and moves in two separate programs. SBA 7(a) loans, for working capital, rebounded in fiscal 2024 to 123 loans and $41.3 million, up 38.2% in count. The 504 program, for buildings and equipment, held flat at 49 loans but wrote bigger checks, $36.7 million at an average of $748,633. Community Reinvestment Act banks, a separate channel, reported $407.8 million in loans to firms under $1 million in revenue in 2023.

Exports run on a different scale entirely. Identified exporters shipped $8.4 billion in goods abroad in 2023, nearly double the year before as energy and crop prices climbed. Small firms were 83.4% of those exporters but only 23.6% of the value, $2.0 billion, because the big dollars leave with oil, grain and machinery.

Veterans, Tribes and a Rural Owner Base

Women own 42.4% of North Dakota businesses, and ownership is more rural here than in most states, 23,610 rural-owned firms against 41,658 urban-owned, better than a third of the classified total.

• Veterans own 7.6% of businesses, 4,755 in all, well above their 5.1% of the workforce, a reflection of the state’s military presence.
• American Indian owners run 1,856 businesses, the mark of North Dakota’s five tribal nations.
• White-owned businesses number 69,214, the largest group by race.

An $82 Billion Economy Built on Oil and Farms

North Dakota’s economy was $81.9 billion in 2025 at current prices, after $80.1 billion in 2024. Adjusted for inflation, it grew about 0.3% in 2025, following 2.0% in 2024, by the BEA’s accounts.

What sets the mix apart is how much comes out of the ground. The largest shares of output are:

• Mining, chiefly oil and gas, 15.2% of output, the single largest private slice, against about one to two percent nationally.
• Finance, insurance and real estate, 13.7%, then government, 10.5%, and manufacturing, 8.6%.
• Agriculture, 6.4%, with farms alone at $4.87 billion, again far above the national norm for a state that ranks among the country’s top producers of wheat, canola and edible beans.

One nuance matters: the dollar value of North Dakota’s oil has fallen since the 2022 price spike even as the volume pumped has risen, so a smaller mining figure reflects cheaper crude, not less of it.

Badlands Tourism, on Top of Oil and Wheat

The North Dakota Department of Commerce put 2024 visitor spending at $3.4 billion from about 26.3 million trips, drawn largely to the Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park (state-agency figures, model-based; spending eased slightly in 2025 as Canadian travel softened).

Two resource booms, oil in the west and grain across the plains, do most of the earning here, and the small businesses that hire the majority of workers grow up in the space between them.

Forming an LLC, and Why the Taxes Stay Low

The $135 Filing and a November Deadline

A North Dakota LLC files Articles of Organization with the Secretary of State, through the state’s FirstStop portal, for $135. Each year after, it files an annual report for $50, and the deadline is a fixed date rather than an anniversary: November 15 for most LLCs, or April 15 for farming and ranching LLCs, a nod to the state’s growing season. There is no annual franchise tax. To walk the whole process, see our guide to starting an LLC in North Dakota, which lines up the filing, the agent and the first report.

A 2.5% Top Income Tax, Paid for by Oil

North Dakota keeps some of the lowest income taxes in the country. After a 2023 overhaul, the personal income tax tops out at just 2.50%, and a zero-percent bracket exempts roughly the first $48,000 of taxable income for a single filer. The corporate tax is graduated and low, from 1.41% up to 4.31%. The state sales tax is 5%, though cities and counties add local rates on top. What makes the low income taxes possible is oil: North Dakota levies a 5% gross production tax and a 5% oil extraction tax on crude at the wellhead, and that severance revenue does much of the work a state income tax does elsewhere. The minimum wage stays at the federal floor of $7.25, and a 2025 attempt to raise it did not pass.

Every North Dakota LLC must also name a registered agent with an in-state address. That choice is worth care, and our review of the registered agent services in North Dakota weighs the options by cost and support.

Questions About Oil, Taxes and Starting Up in North Dakota

Sources

• Firm counts, employment shares, ownership and exports are from the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 North Dakota Small Business Profile.
• Industry, county and oil-sector employment and pay for 2024 are Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data.
• The Bureau of Economic Analysis regional accounts give the GDP levels and the mining and agriculture shares, in current and inflation-adjusted dollars.
• Application counts are the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics, and the nonemployer totals its Nonemployer Statistics.
• Loan counts and dollars are summed by fiscal year from the SBA’s 7(a) and 504 FOIA files.
• LLC fees and the annual-report deadline are the North Dakota Secretary of State’s; the income, sales and oil taxes are the North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner’s.
• The $7.25 minimum wage is the North Dakota Department of Labor and Human Rights’ rate, equal to the federal floor.
• Tourism figures for 2024 are the North Dakota Department of Commerce’s.