The 2025 Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS) is a collaboration of all 12 Federal Reserve Banks and provides timely information about small business conditions to policymakers and service providers. The 2025 survey was fielded from September to November 2025 and reached more than 6,500 small employer firms, collecting information about the performance, challenges, and credit-seeking experiences of businesses across the United States. On March 3, we published the 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, where we share findings from the survey’s employer firm respondents.
The report finds that many performance metrics remained stable year over year, though expectations for future revenue and employment growth declined. In the 12 months leading up to the survey, small employer firms (hereafter “firms” or “businesses”) experienced challenges growing their sales and with increased costs.
Nearly half of firms said they source at least some inputs from outside the United States, and a large majority of these firms reported that those inputs increased in price from 2024 to 2025. Firms reported responding to these price increases in a variety of ways, including by passing on at least some of the increases to customers and absorbing some of the increases themselves. Relatively few firms reported changing suppliers or onshoring production.
Special questions on artificial intelligence (AI) in the 2025 survey found that just under half of firms were using AI in some capacity. The most common uses were writing or marketing, individual productivity, and planning or analysis. While most firms had not experienced changes to their labor costs as a result of AI adoption, a majority reported increases in productivity.
The report also provides insights on firms’ funding needs and their access to financing in order to meet those needs. About half of firms had their funding needs met, either with or without external financing; about one-third faced a funding gap despite applying for financing, while the remainder needed financing but did not apply.
Connecting Communities: Unlocking the Voice of Small Businesses: New Insights from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey
April 9, 2026
3:00 – 4:00 pm ET
During this Connecting Communities webinar, we’ll take a closer look at the 2026 Report on Employer Firms, and explore key findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to engage directly with the report’s authors during a live Q&A session, bringing deeper context and clarity to the findings.
Regarding credit applicants, the report finds that the share of firms that applied for loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances remained steady overall, while the share that applied at online lenders increased for the fifth consecutive survey year. Large banks remained the top source at which firms applied. Among firms that borrowed from online lenders, 60% reported higher-than-expected borrowing costs, a greater percentage than among firms that borrowed from other types of lenders.
Please see the report for many more findings. While this report includes findings on employer firms, the SBCS also collected over 5,200 responses from nonemployer firms; the findings for nonemployers will be explored in a separate report later this year.
Detailed findings for employer firms are available in the 2026 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey. As findings from the 2025 SBCS are released throughout 2026, you can find the data at fedsmallbusiness.org.
