Kabbage is reporting in the first half of 2019 small businesses across all U.S. states and industries experienced revenue growth. With small businesses employing around 60 million people and making up 99.9% of U.S firms, this is great news as the year comes to an end.
2019 Kabbage Small Business Revenue Index
The data comes from The Kabbage Small Business Revenue Index. This is a data-rich index with more than 2 million life data connections from 200,000+ small businesses across the country. This live information was not accessible to the public in the past.
By making it available, Kabbage is allowing businesses across all segments to view ongoing revenue trends to make informed decisions. This includes small financial and investment firms, suppliers, manufacturers and others.
Tracking Small Businesses
According to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, firms with less than 20 people make up 89.0 of all U.S. businesses. So, saying small businesses are the engine of the U.S. economy is not an exaggeration.
Additionally, small businesses create the bulk of the jobs and they account for almost half of the GDP. Being able to track how they are performing in real-time is therefore invaluable to public and private organizations around the world.
What sets the Kabbage index apart is it truly tracks small businesses. The data looks at the aggregated and anonymized analysis of small business performance. This is carried out with the goal of measuring revenue growth by identifying it with the Kabbage Index Value (KIV).
The KIV adjusts accordingly to the monthly median-revenue growth of small businesses. Since 2017, small business median revenue has grown a total of 58% through June 30, 2019.
This report groups together small business revenue growth by industry based on North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) as well as by state. And the revenue for all 50 states and District of Columbia were sorted out based on the volume of small businesses in each state according to the Small Business Administration. They were then categorized into three groups, large, medium and small states.
First Half of 2019 Index Results
In the first six months of 2019, the KIV revealed the median revenue of U.S. small businesses grew by 15.7%. According to Kabbage, this is a 22% increase over the same period in 2018. What is more, the growth is even more impressive when you consider revenue for the second half of 2018 only grew by 1.8%.
When it comes to industries, the construction sector led all small business revenue with a growth of 23.3% and a KIV increase of more than 32 points. Small businesses in the agriculture, mining, and utilities sectors had the second greatest rate of growth at a 19.1% increase.
In the emailed report, Holly Wade, NFIB’s Director, Research and Policy Analysis, says strong optimism continues in the small business sector.
Wade adds, “Despite a slight slowdown in 2019, likely due to the government shutdown earlier this year and escalating tariffs, overall, the small business economy is roaring ahead with no sign of a near term recession.”
The States
The largest state group has states that have more than 580, 000 businesses in them. And topping the list is Ohio with the highest KIV increase at 26 points. Tennessee came in second with a peak KIV of 202.4 points, but the overall growth was 20%. And according to the report, the state leads the nation in small business job growth.
The medium states group has between 250-500K small businesses. And in this group, Alabama is number one with an increase of 45 points on the KIV. This is a 27.9% increase for the first half of the year.
Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Wisconsin round up the top five with 190.89, 190.31, 187.84, and 182.36 points by the end of June.
The small states have less than 250K small businesses in them, and Alaska is topping the list with an increase of 55 points. The growth from 141.8 to 196.9 represents a 38.8% increase for the first half of 2019.
In terms of overall points, Vermont came in with 222.3 followed by Delaware (207.2), Rhode Island (206.6), North Dakota (198.2), and Alaska (196.9) for the top five.
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