Key Insight
Between 51,000 and 66,000 US employer businesses change hands each year by every route. The SBA finances about a tenth of them — 5,638 a year on a six-year average, 7,112 in its record year. And far more businesses close than sell: on the only public count that sets the two against each other, three closed for every one sold (355,740 against 118,465). There is no official register of business sales, so every figure here is an estimate built from Census survey shares and SBA loan files, and should be read as a floor.
There is no official count
Start with the uncomfortable part. No public register records business sales in the United States.
The SBA publishes loan-level files for its 7(a) and 504 programmes. That is the only free, deal-level public record available. Listing sites and broker associations publish summaries, not deals. So any national figure is an estimate, and anyone quoting one to three significant figures is overstating what the data can carry.
This is why the same question gets wildly different answers. A number drawn from SBA files counts one slice of the market. A number drawn from listings counts attempts, not completions. They are not comparable, and mixing them is where most bad statistics in this field come from.
Our reading comes from three independent cuts of the Census Annual Business Survey, each scaled to roughly 5.9 million employer firms:
- 4.51% of owners are new to their business each year, of whom 22.07% bought it → 58,726
- The same new-owner share against the 19.2% who sold a previous business → 51,081
- The same share against a 25.0% sold rate → 66,474
So: roughly 51,000 to 66,000 employer businesses a year, by every route.
That is employer firms only. It excludes the 30,427,808 US businesses with no employees at all — five in six of the total, averaging $57,611 a year in revenue. Most of those are jobs rather than businesses, and there is usually nothing to transfer.
The SBA finances about a tenth of them
Against those estimates, the SBA financed 5,638 acquisitions a year on a six-year average. That puts its share at 8% to 11%.
Measured against its record year — 7,112 in fiscal 2025, the most since the agency began flagging acquisitions in FY2018 — the share is nearer 11% to 14%.
Either way the conclusion holds: roughly nine in ten business sales happen where nobody can count them. Seller notes, cash, private credit and conventional bank debt carry the rest.
Most businesses do not sell at all
Census asks business owners what became of the previous business they started. The answers:
What happened to the previous business an owner started
| Outcome | Count | Share |
|---|
| Closed | 355,740 | 58% |
| Sold | 118,465 | 19% |
| Other | 142,904 | 23% |
Tip: swipe horizontally to view all columns.
Three closed for every one sold.
The honest caveat: that 23% answering "Other" moves the ratio. If every one of them was a sale, the ratio is 1.4 to 1. If every one was a closure, it is 4.2 to 1. Either way, closing is the normal outcome.
This is the only public count we know of that sets sales against closures. It is a survey of owners' previous ventures, not a register, and it should be read that way.
What this means if you are buying
The market is not short of sellers. It is short of businesses that can be handed to someone else.
Of 6,077,257 employer firms, 92,986 clear every test for licensing, size and industry risk — nearer 84,000 once you stop counting a firm once per industry it operates in. About 204 of those change hands with SBA financing in a year.
That is roughly 1 in 457 of the good set, or about 1 in 45 by every route.
In short
Roughly 51,000 to 66,000 employer businesses sell a year, the SBA finances about a tenth of them, and three businesses close for every one that sells. No official register exists, so treat every one of those figures as an estimate and a floor.
Every count here is recomputed from the Census Annual Business Survey and the SBA's own loan-level releases. The full working, including the whittle from six million to 92,986, is in our research on the transferable inventory.
