Comparable baseline
Virginia at a glance
| Population | 8,880,107 | July 1, 2025; +2.8% since 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Business applications | 12,753 | July 2026, seasonally adjusted |
| Trailing-12-month applications | 149,096 | 1,679.0 per 100,000 residents |
| High-propensity applications | 3,358 | 26.3% of July applications |
| Projected employer formations | 684 | Census four-quarter projection for July's cohort |
| Small businesses | 880,366 | SBA 2025 profile; underlying employer and nonemployer data are from 2022 |
| Small-business employment | 1,602,868 | 45.9% of private employment in 2022 |
| Employer establishments | 210,842 | 2023 County Business Patterns |
Application rankings cover the 50 states and use unrounded figures. Applications are qualifying EIN filings, not confirmed business openings. Measurement years differ because federal datasets are released on different schedules.
Virginia’s broader application trend remained positive even though the latest July comparison weakened. The state recorded 149,096 applications during the 12 months ending July 2026, 16.7% more than in the preceding 12 months. July alone was 3.2% below July 2025.
Application growth remained positive across the year
The Census Bureau recorded 12,753 seasonally adjusted applications in July 2026, almost unchanged from June at +0.2%. Virginia ranked 14th by raw count but 32nd after adjusting for population, with 143.6 applications per 100,000 residents. Within the 16-state South, that per-capita rate ranked 15th.
The trailing-year application rate was stronger, at 1,679.0 per 100,000 and rank 22 nationally. Its 16.7% growth ranked 25th and remained below the Southern median of 19.3%. Compared with July 2019, current applications were 75.9% higher.
Professional and technical services carry twice their national weight
Virginia’s 2023 County Business Patterns data counted 210,842 employer establishments and 3,581,650 employees. Professional, scientific, and technical services employed 536,441 people—15.0% of state private employment and 2.03 times the 50-state share.
Health care and social assistance employed 488,231, while retail trade employed 423,568. The professional-services concentration describes the operating employer economy; state-level BFS does not show that this sector generated the recent application changes.
The sector is also broad, spanning legal, accounting, architectural, engineering, computer, consulting, scientific, and related services. Its location quotient describes their combined employment weight. It should not be narrowed to federal contracting, technology, or any single profession without more detailed evidence.
Independent cities make the employer map unusually distributed
Fairfax County held 696,002 private employees in 2023, or 19.4% of the state total. Loudoun County held 192,220, or 5.4%, and Henrico County held 183,459, or 5.1%. Together, the three accounted for only 29.9%, the fourth-lowest top-three concentration among states.
Virginia’s independent cities are county-equivalents in CBP and appear separately from surrounding counties. That system divides metropolitan employment among more geographic units than in many states, so a county ranking needs to include the cities rather than treat them as missing. The result supports a distributed-employment story, not a claim that economic activity is even across every locality.
Small-business employment sits near the Southern middle
The SBA’s 2025 profile reports 880,366 small businesses using underlying 2022 data: 157,804 small employer firms and 722,562 nonemployer establishments. Nonemployers made up 82.1% of the combined total.
Small employer firms provided 1,602,868 jobs, or 45.9% of private employment and rank 33 nationally. The share was almost exactly the Southern median of 46.0%. Virginia’s large absolute business and job totals therefore do not translate into an unusually high small-business share of the workforce.
Official Virginia business resources
- The State Corporation Commission provides new-business guidance and online business services.
- Virginia Tax handles applicable accounts through Register a Business.
- The Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation routes covered occupations and businesses.
- The Virginia SBDC provides confidential advising at no cost.
Source and calculation note
July figures use the seasonally adjusted July 2026 BFS release. The trailing-year total sums unadjusted applications from August 2025 through July 2026 and compares them with August 2024 through July 2025. Rates use Virginia’s July 1, 2025 population estimate; ranks compare 50 states using unrounded values. Small-business figures use 2022 SBA profile components. County and industry figures use 2023 CBP, treating independent cities as county-equivalents. Sources were retrieved or checked September 3, 2026.