--- url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-five-people-per-closure/' title: 'The Average American Workplace That Closed Last Year Had Five People on Its Payroll. In Restaurants, Nine.' author: name: Samantha Lankford url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/author/sam/' date: '2026-09-29T15:30:00-04:00' modified: '2026-09-29T15:30:00-04:00' type: post summary: '2,686,413 people were on the payroll of the 533,856 US workplaces that closed in the year to March 2023. That is 5.03 each — and 8.95 in restaurants.' categories: - Blog Post image: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-five-people-per-closure-hero.webp' published: true --- # The Average American Workplace That Closed Last Year Had Five People on Its Payroll. In Restaurants, Nine. ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png)Founder Data Report ![The Average American Workplace That Closed Last Year Had Five People on Its Payroll. In Restaurants, Nine.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-five-people-per-closure-hero.webp) Founder Data Report # The Average American Workplace That Closed Last Year Had Five People on Its Payroll. In Restaurants, Nine. By Michael Dermer • Updated September 29, 2026 Join us Fridays at 12 PM ET to ask TLE CEO Michael Dermer your questions live. [Join the CEO Call →](https://shorturl.at/364XX) The Census Bureau counts every employer business that had staff one March and none the next, and counts the people who were on its payroll. Here is what closing costs, by trade and by how long the business had been open. Quick Answer In the year to March 2023, 533,856 American workplaces belonging to 523,958 employer firms stopped having employees. Those workplaces had 2,686,413 people on the payroll twelve months earlier — an average of **5.03 people per closing workplace**, or 5.13 per closing firm. The average is not the story. In accommodation and food services it is 8.95; in real estate and rental and leasing it is 2.55. The same closure, in two different trades, is the difference between 3.5 times as many people looking for work. What the numbers say - 2,686,413 people were on the payroll of the 533,856 US workplaces that closed in the year to March 2023 — 5.03 each. - Accommodation and food services averaged 8.95 people per closing workplace, the highest of the 15 sectors big enough to read. Real estate averaged 2.55. - Restaurants and hotels were 10.0% of the closing workplaces and 17.8% of the jobs that went with them. - A firm that had been open 26 years or more averaged 6.88 people at closing; one closing in its second year averaged 2.95. - The firms that had been trading since before 1978 averaged 11.32 — 3.8 times the youngest band. ## Same closure, very different number of people A business closing is usually counted one way: how many closed. The Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics also records how many people were working there, which is the number that decides how much a closure actually costs the people around it. Across the 15 sectors with at least 5,000 closing workplaces — 99.2% of all closures and 99.0% of the employment behind them — the figure runs from 8.95 down to 2.55. Four smaller sectors are left off the chart because their cells are too thin to rank: management of companies posts the highest figure of all at 13.37, on 817 closing workplaces, and one number built on that few units is not a sector reading. The Data People on the payroll of the average closing workplace, by sector, 2023 Accommodation and foodservices53,488 workplaces closed8.95Manufacturing15,380 workplaces closed8.15Health care and socialassistance48,876 workplaces closed7.18Administrative and support33,416 workplaces closed6.36Educational services7,097 workplaces closed6.01Information9,119 workplaces closed5.68Arts, entertainment, andrecreation11,446 workplaces closed5.42Wholesale trade19,945 workplaces closed5.06Retail trade55,246 workplaces closed4.47Transportation andwarehousing29,892 workplaces closed4.19Professional, scientific,and technical services75,401 workplaces closed3.78Finance and insurance20,197 workplaces closed3.68Construction64,790 workplaces closed3.67Other services (exceptpublic administration)50,525 workplaces closed3.48Real estate and rental andleasing34,759 workplaces closed2.55 Bars are drawn on a 0 to 10 axis, not 0 to 100, and the printed figure is the true one. Orange marks a sector at or above the national average of 5.03; slate marks the 7 below it. Wholesale trade is the one that decides the line: at 5.06 it clears the average by 0.03 of a person, which is why the figures are printed to two decimals. Four sectors with fewer than 5,000 closing workplaces are excluded — management of companies, mining, utilities and agriculture — which together are 0.8% of closing workplaces. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics, firm-age tables (BDSFAGE), reference year 2023. A firm death is a firm with employees in March 2022 and none in March 2023; the employment counted is what it had in the first of those Marches. Employment divided by closing establishments within each sector. ## Where the jobs went, against where the closures were Because the per-closure figure varies this much, the trades that lose the most *businesses* are not the trades that lose the most *jobs*. Professional and technical services had the most closing workplaces of any sector — 14.1% of the national total — but only 10.6% of the employment behind them. Accommodation and food services runs the other way: 10.0% of the closures, 17.8% of the jobs, a gap of 7.8 points and the widest either way. Eight of the 15 sectors carry a larger share of the jobs than of the closures and seven carry less, though wholesale trade clears by 0.02 of a point and is a tie in all but sign. The Data Share of closing workplaces against share of the jobs behind them, 2023 Accommodation and food services Share of all closing workplaces10.0% Share of all the jobs that went with them17.8% Health care and social assistance Share of all closing workplaces9.2% Share of all the jobs that went with them13.1% Administrative and support Share of all closing workplaces6.3% Share of all the jobs that went with them7.9% Professional, scientific, and technical services Share of all closing workplaces14.1% Share of all the jobs that went with them10.6% Construction Share of all closing workplaces12.1% Share of all the jobs that went with them8.8% Real estate and rental and leasing Share of all closing workplaces6.5% Share of all the jobs that went with them3.3% Both bars in a row are drawn on the same 0 to 20% scale, so they can be compared directly, and the printed percentages are the true ones. Each is a share of the national total — 533,856 closing workplaces and 2,686,413 people. Slate is the share of closures and orange the share of the jobs; the colours name which measure a bar is, not which number is better — in three of these six rows the orange bar is the shorter one. Six of the 15 charted sectors are shown: the three with the largest excess of jobs over closures and the three with the largest shortfall. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics, firm-age tables (BDSFAGE), reference year 2023. A firm death is a firm with employees in March 2022 and none in March 2023; the employment counted is what it had in the first of those Marches. Shares of the national closing-establishment and closing-employment totals. > 10.0% of the closures. 17.8% of the people. ## The longer it had been open, the more people went with it The same file records how old each closing firm was. A firm that closed in its second year had 2.95 people on the payroll. One that had been trading twenty-six years or more had 6.88, and the 13,422 firms that had been in business since before 1978 — at least forty-five years old — had 11.32. The figure climbs at almost every step of the age scale; the one exception is the sixteen-to-twenty band, which sits just below eleven-to-fifteen. Nothing here says an older business is more likely to close. It says that when one does, more people are standing behind it. The Data People on the payroll of the average closing firm, by how long it had been open One year old106,493 firms closed2.95Two years old55,846 firms closed3.91Three years old38,712 firms closed4.57Four years old31,256 firms closed4.64Five years old25,810 firms closed5.00Six to ten years old84,448 firms closed5.52Eleven to fifteen years old46,822 firms closed6.22Sixteen to twenty years old37,935 firms closed5.92Twenty-one to twenty-fiveyears old25,634 firms closed6.74Twenty-six years old or more57,580 firms closed6.88Open since before 197813,422 firms closed11.32 Bars are drawn on a 0 to 12 axis and the printed figure is the true one. Orange marks a band at or above the national average of 5.13 people per closing firm. There is no bar for firms under one year old: a business cannot be recorded as closing before its first birthday, and the Bureau flags that cell rather than printing a zero. The eleven bands shown add to all 523,958 closing firms and all 2,686,413 people. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics, firm-age tables (BDSFAGE), reference year 2023. A firm death is a firm with employees in March 2022 and none in March 2023; the employment counted is what it had in the first of those Marches. Employment divided by closing firms within each age band. ## What this does not measure It does not say 2,686,413 people were made redundant. The Bureau counts the employment a firm had in the March before it stopped having any, so the figure includes people who had already left, and it cannot see anyone hired by a buyer, a successor or a competitor down the road. It is the size of the payroll that stopped being that firm’s, not a count of people out of work. One counting note sits underneath the sector chart. A firm operating in two industries is recorded as a closure in both, so the nineteen sectors’ firm counts add to 524,877 against a national 523,958 — an over-count of 919, or 0.175%. Workplaces and employment carry no such overlap: both add to the national total exactly. That is why every sector figure on this page is per closing *workplace*, and only the national and age figures are per closing *firm*. The Data Where the numbers land 5.03 people on the average closing workplace’s payroll 8.95 in accommodation and food services, the highest readable sector 2.55 in real estate and rental and leasing, the lowest 11.32 at firms that had been trading since before 1978 U.S. Census Bureau, Business Dynamics Statistics, firm-age tables (BDSFAGE), reference year 2023. A firm death is a firm with employees in March 2022 and none in March 2023; the employment counted is what it had in the first of those Marches. ## Frequently Asked Questions How many people were on the payroll of the average US business that closed in 2023? 5.03 per closing workplace and 5.13 per closing firm. 533,856 workplaces belonging to 523,958 employer firms closed in the year to March 2023, and they had 2,686,413 people on the payroll a year earlier. Which industry loses the most people per business closure? Of the 15 sectors with enough closing workplaces to read, accommodation and food services is highest at 8.95 people per closing workplace, and real estate and rental and leasing is lowest at 2.55. Management of companies posts a higher figure still, 13.37, but on only 817 closing workplaces, which is too thin to rank. Do older businesses employ more people when they close? Yes. A firm closing in its second year averaged 2.95 people; one that had been trading twenty-six years or more averaged 6.88, and firms open since before 1978 averaged 11.32. This is not a statement about how likely each is to close — only about how many people are behind it when it does. Does this mean 2.69 million people lost their jobs? No. The figure is the employment each firm had in the March before it stopped having any. It includes people who had already left and it cannot follow anyone picked up by a buyer or a competitor. It measures the size of the payroll that ended, not unemployment. Where do these numbers come from? The U.S. Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics, firm-age tables, reference year 2023 — the Bureau's own count of employer firms that had staff one March and none the next, with the employment they carried. Employer businesses only; the self-employed without staff are not in it. Keep reading - [Half the Businesses That Closed Last Year Had Been Open Six Years or More](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-closures-by-business-age/) - [Surviving Twenty-Six Years Cuts Your Odds of Closing by 61%. In Health Care It Cuts Them by 35%.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-what-surviving-buys-you/) - [946,590 Workplaces Opened Outside America’s Metros in 28 Years. 947,046 Closed.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-outside-the-metros/) Part of the entrepreneurial struggle: [Leadership Burden](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-struggle/leadership/) ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png) Published by **The Lonely Entrepreneur** — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. [lonelyentrepreneur.com](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/) This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.