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LendingTree | Young businesses drove job growth in the U.S. in 2025, adding more than 1.8 million net jobs while older businesses lost nearly 1.2 million. This isn’t a new phenomenon. LendingTree’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Business Employment Dynamics data found that from 2016 through 2025, young businesses added more than 18.8 million net jobs, compared with a net loss of 3.0 million jobs among older businesses. The trend is widespread. Startups saw net job growth in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2025, while older businesses shed jobs in most states.

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LendingTree | Having capital is one of the most important factors in running a small business, and taking out a loan is one way to get it. Denial rates may be high, but they’re falling: According to a LendingTree analysis, 19% of businesses that applied for a loan, line of credit (LOC) or merchant cash advance (MCA) in 2025 were denied — down from 21% in 2024.

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LendingTree | Where are Americans moving, building and starting businesses right now? To find out, we ranked the country’s largest metros using three categories: people and housing, work and earnings, and business and economy. One metro pulled ahead of the rest: Austin, Texas. Here’s a look at which other metros dominate.

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LendingTree | While businesses remain more likely to expect price hikes than cuts in the coming months, that expectation has cooled somewhat since December — even as the cost pressures businesses face appear to be intensifying. Nearly a third of businesses, or 32.3%, expect to raise prices before year’s end. During that same time frame, 54.9% of businesses expect the prices they pay for goods and services to increase.

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LendingTree | Business bankruptcy filings are increasing across the U.S. In the 12 months ended March 31, 2026, filings rose to 25,796, an 11.4% increase from a year earlier. Here’s a closer look at where business bankruptcy filings are most common, how they’re structured and what the data shows.

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LendingTree | LendingTree ranked the 100 largest U.S metros across eight metrics to identify where small businesses appear to rely most heavily on tourism. (See the methodology section for a full description of each metric.) Taken together, these metrics provide a more complete picture of the metros where tourism serves as a fundamental driver of small business activity and the broader local economy. While the top three metros are among the nation’s best-known tourist destinations, several of the other highest-ranking metros are less obvious.

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LendingTree | American businesses are feeling cautiously upbeat heading into the second half of 2026, but optimism is far from universal. LendingTree research finds that while confidence in future business performance has improved over the past year, the majority of businesses still expect conditions to remain largely the same across other growth measures. Where businesses operate, how many people they employ and what industry they’re in all play a role in how rosy (or not) their outlook is.

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LendingTree | Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. businesses have used AI in the past two weeks, and a growing share plan to lean in even further. But a widening gap between large corporations and small businesses suggests the AI revolution isn’t arriving equally. For employees across the board, however, it seems their jobs may be safe for now, as companies report using AI more to supplement what their workers do, rather than to replace them.

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LendingTree | America’s entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well — and younger Americans are leading the charge. According to a LendingTree analysis, new business applications hit a record high in 2025. Meanwhile, according to a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers, more than 1 in 4 Americans (27%) say they’ve seriously considered starting a business in the past 12 months.

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LendingTree | Of the 5.9 million U.S. businesses that employ at least one person beyond the owner, just 5.7% are owned by someone younger than 35. That’s up slightly from our 2024 report, but it underscores how rare it is for young people to run businesses with employees. Our analysis also shows that young ownership of employer firms varies widely by industry and state.

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