Virginia Small Business and Economy Statistics, 2026

Small businesses in Virginia number 880,366, or 99.6% of the state’s firms, and together they employ about 1.6 million people, 45.9% of its workers. They sit inside a high-paying economy, where the average private job pays $77,660 and the professional and technical work packed into the northern counties pays far more.

The SBA reports that Virginia’s small business employment grew 21.2% between 1998 and 2022, which exceeded the national small business employment growth rate. In the most recent year, small firms produced a net 34,814 jobs, 79.2% of the state’s net job creation, and private employment rose 1.1%. New business applications reached a record in 2025. Virginia’s food taxes, a common source of confusion, get their own section below.

Every figure here rests on a federal or Virginia state source, all listed at the end.

A Base of Mostly One-Person Firms

By the SBA’s 2025 Virginia profile, the state’s 880,366 small businesses are 99.6% of all its firms, and 722,562 of them, about 82%, have no employees. The count is up from 854,172 a year earlier.

• The 157,804 small firms with employees make up 97.6% of Virginia’s employers and carry a $93.1 billion payroll, 39.7% of the state total (SUSB 2022).
• The no-payroll firms took in $36.9 billion in 2022 receipts, and 88.5% of them are sole proprietorships (NES 2022).
• By count, the largest small-business industries are professional and technical services (136,539, the northern-Virginia base), transportation and warehousing (104,230), other services (93,918), construction (88,189) and real estate (82,488).

The High-Paid Middle of Virginia’s Economy

Health care and social assistance is the largest private employer, 498,470 jobs, and it added the most in 2024, up 4.7%. Professional, scientific and technical services is second, 470,378 jobs, operates the most establishments of any sector, and pays $135,916, about 75% above the private average. Retail is third at 392,040, and accommodation and food fourth at 345,714, the lowest-paying big sector at $28,038. One own-code note: government of all levels is 737,138 jobs, 17.9% of Virginia’s employment, a federal-heavy share.

• The top of the pay spread is management of companies ($157,803), information ($148,011), utilities ($132,907) and finance and insurance ($129,122).
• Wholesale trade ($109,596) and professional and technical services ($135,916) also run well above the field.
• The lowest-paying fields are accommodation and food ($28,038), arts and recreation ($36,483) and retail ($39,467), all well below the $77,660 private-sector average.

Inside Northern Virginia’s Contract-and-Data Belt

The professional, scientific and technical sector’s 470,378 jobs are led by computer systems design, 172,379 of them at $158,658, about 5% of all private employment on its own. Management and scientific consulting adds 91,322 jobs at $137,159, and scientific research and development 29,947 at $147,079. This is the federal-contracting knowledge economy as the data records it, with no firm named.

The best-paid large cell in the state is data processing and hosting, 19,506 jobs at $186,466, up 5.8% in 2024 and concentrated in Fairfax and Loudoun, the heart of what gets called data center alley. Federal government adds 193,433 jobs, about one Virginia job in 21, and military output is 3.0% of the state’s GDP.

From Fairfax to the Hampton Roads Shipyards

Read the county figures as private-sector; Virginia’s heavy federal footprint is noted wherever it swings the totals. Fairfax County dwarfs the rest, 549,996 private jobs at $116,993, its computer-systems-design cell alone 70,951 jobs at $180,978 and its data-hosting cell paying $211,255.

• Loudoun County is data center alley, its data-hosting cell paying $212,811 and its warehousing up 31% in 2024, with private employment up 5.2%.
• Arlington pairs high-paid tech, computer systems design at $171,175, with a heavy federal presence.
• Henrico and Richmond city anchor the finance-and-insurance metro, where Richmond’s finance cell pays $153,113.
• Norfolk and Newport News hold the Hampton Roads shipbuilding cluster; the statewide ship-and-boat-building cell is 30,718 jobs, and because the largest county is confidential in the data, only the state figure shows, with no yard named.

The Ports and Warehouses of Hampton Roads

Warehousing and storage grew 8.6% in 2024 to 43,901 jobs, one of the fastest-growing cells in the state, behind the Port of Virginia’s 3.5 million containers in fiscal 2024; ship and boat building added 2.3% to reach 30,718 jobs.

Virginia’s private payroll divides between a northern belt where the average job clears six figures and a coastal one built on ships, ports and warehouses, with the capital’s finance metro sitting in between.

The 2024 Job Year, Gains and a Few Slips

Private employment rose 1.1% in 2024, a net 36,762 jobs, and the movement was lopsided by sector.

• Health care added the most, 22,509 jobs, up 4.7%.
• Arts and recreation led the sectors in percentage growth, up 5.8%, and management of companies rose 3.7%.
• Transportation and warehousing gained 3.3% and construction 2.1%.

The losses were shallow and clustered on the office side: administrative and support work slipped 0.9%, finance and insurance 0.8%, manufacturing 0.6% and retail 0.3%, while the computer-systems-design cell itself eased 1.2% after a long run of growth.

New-Business Filings on a High Plateau

Virginia’s new business applications climbed through the pandemic and have stayed high since. The Census reports them month by month; added into annual totals they are best read as approximations. The count sat near 86,550 in 2018, rose to 131,082 in 2021, and has stayed elevated since: 131,413 in 2023, a softer 126,386 in 2024, and a peak of 138,762 in 2025, roughly 58% above 2019. The likely-to-hire subset peaked near 41,300 in 2023 and has settled around 38,000 since.

Establishments turned over steadily: 33,983 opened against 30,684 that closed in the year to March 2024, a net gain of 3,299. Small firms did the heavy lifting on jobs, a net 34,814, which was 79.2% of Virginia’s net job creation that year, the highest small-firm share in the two most recent editions of the data.

SBA Loans Climbing, Exports Easing

Two federal series pulled apart in Virginia last year: SBA-backed lending rose sharply while goods exports fell.

A Strong 7(a) Year

The 7(a) program grew on both counts in fiscal 2024, its loans up 23.6% to 1,204 and its dollars up 12.1% to $555.2 million. The 504 program, which funds fixed assets, added loans, up to 106, but lost dollars, down 9.1% to $83.9 million on smaller average deals. The lending clustered in Fairfax, Loudoun and the Richmond and Virginia Beach areas, with accommodation-and-food and professional services drawing the most 7(a) money.

• On a separate track, Community Reinvestment Act banks reported $1.9 billion in loans to Virginia firms under $1 million in revenue in 2023.

Exports Slipped in 2023

The $21.4 billion that identified exporters sold abroad in 2023 was down from $24.0 billion a year earlier, and small firms held $8.2 billion of that, 38.0%, spread across 5,980 small exporters.

It is a picture of small firms borrowing more to grow at home while the export side, carried by larger manufacturers, gives ground.

An Owner Base Leaning Urban and Veteran

Women own 45.4% of Virginia businesses, and the ownership base tilts strongly urban, 647,232 urban-owned firms against 166,501 rural, the metro shape of a state whose jobs sit mostly in its cities and suburbs.

• Veterans own 8.3% of Virginia businesses, 64,734 in all, a high share that reflects the state’s large military and federal population.
• Hispanic owners hold 10.7% (88,622), Black owners run 148,805 businesses and Asian owners 113,250.
• White-owned businesses number 590,634, the largest group.

A $798 Billion Economy, and Where It Comes From

Virginia’s economy was $798.4 billion in 2025 at current prices, after $761.7 billion in 2024. In real terms, with inflation removed, growth was about 1.7% in 2025 after 2.4% in 2024, on the BEA’s accounts.

Where does the money come from? The biggest shares of output are:

• Finance, insurance and real estate, 19.6% of output, the largest slice.
• Professional and business services, 19.1%, just behind.
• Government, 16.5%, swollen by the federal presence, with military output alone 3.0%.
• Manufacturing, 6.7%.

A Record Tourism Year

Virginia Tourism Corporation reported 2024 as a record: $35.1 billion in visitor spending, up 5.4%, from 44.7 million overnight visitors, supporting about 229,000 jobs (state agency figures, model-based).

It is an economy built on knowledge work, federal spending and trade through its ports, though most people who look up Virginia’s taxes are after something narrower.

How Virginia Taxes Food, and Everything Else

No corner of Virginia’s tax code gets looked up more than the way it taxes food, and it is three separate taxes, not one.

The Grocery Tax, the Sales Tax and the Meals Tax

Groceries, meaning food for home consumption, are taxed at just 1% across Virginia, after the state dropped its 1.5% share on January 1, 2023. The general sales tax is higher and varies by region, from 5.3% to 7.0%, a 4.3% state rate plus 1% local plus regional add-ons in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, Central Virginia and the Historic Triangle. And a restaurant meal carries a third thing on top of the sales tax: a local meals tax set by each city or county, so there is no single statewide restaurant-tax rate.

• The county meals-tax cap is 6%, with real rates often around 4% to 7.5%; Arlington is at 5% as of July 2025 and Fairfax began a 4% tax in January 2026.
• Alcohol, tobacco and hot prepared food do not get the 1% grocery rate.

Income, Corporate and the Local BPOL Tax

The individual income tax is graduated to a top rate of 5.75%, reached on taxable income over $17,000, and Virginia allows no local income tax. The corporate rate is a flat 6.0%. Many localities also charge a BPOL tax, a business, professional and occupational license levy on gross receipts, a cost particular to Virginia. The minimum wage is a state rate above the federal floor, $12.41 in 2025 and $12.77 from January 1, 2026, indexed to inflation; an earlier push to $15 was not enacted.

The Articles, the SCC, and a Yearly $50

A Virginia LLC files Articles of Organization, not with a Secretary of State but with the State Corporation Commission, for $100; reserving a name first costs $10. Every LLC then owes a $50 annual registration fee, due by the last day of its anniversary month, and the SCC can cancel an LLC that misses it. For the full sequence, our guide to starting an LLC in Virginia runs through the paperwork in order, from the Articles to that first annual filing.

Every LLC also needs a registered agent with a Virginia office, one of the setup choices worth getting right, where we rate the registered agent services in Virginia in a roundup of our own.

For a fully handled setup, our comparison of the best LLC services in Virginia weighs the providers on cost and filing speed.

Virginia Food-Tax and Filing Questions

Sources

• The firm counts, employment dynamics, ownership and export data are pulled from the SBA Office of Advocacy’s 2025 Virginia Small Business Profile.
• The 2024 industry and county pay and employment figures are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
• The Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics supply the new-business applications, and its Nonemployer Statistics the no-payroll counts and receipts.
• The 7(a) and 504 loan totals are tallied from the SBA’s FOIA loan-level dataset, by fiscal year.
• GDP in current and real terms is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional accounts.
• LLC formation rules and fees are set by the Virginia State Corporation Commission and Title 13.1 of the Code of Virginia.
• The food-tax rules are the Virginia Department of Taxation’s, and the local meals tax is authorized by Section 58.1-3833 of the Code of Virginia.
• The minimum wage is the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry’s published rate.
• The 2024 visitor figures are the Virginia Tourism Corporation’s.