Three Problems Made Small-Business Owners’ Top 10 in Every NFIB Survey From 1986 to 2024. Health Insurance Was First Each Time

Forty years of NFIB’s small-business problem rankings: three problems never left the top 10, and others moved a long way.

What the survey asks

NFIB, the small-business association, has run Problems & Priorities eleven times since 1982. Owners who are NFIB members rate each of 75 possible problems on a scale from 1, a critical problem, to 7, not a problem, and NFIB ranks them by the average score. The 2024 edition drew 2,873 usable responses. The list itself changes a little from edition to edition as NFIB adds and retires items, and the report publishes every edition’s ranking side by side. That table is what this piece reads.

Three that never left

Across the ten editions from 1986 to 2024, exactly three problems appear in every top 10. The cost of health insurance ranked first every time. Federal taxes on business income never ranked lower than 6th, and state taxes on business income never lower than 10th. Unreasonable government regulations came closest to joining them: in the top 10 in nine of the ten editions, and 19th in 1986. In the first survey, in 1982, health insurance was not on the list, and interest rates ranked first.

Health insurance has led the list for ten surveys running. Only two other problems never left the top 10.

The ones that come and go

Others move a long way. Interest rates ranked 11th in 1986, fell to 62nd in 2012, and were back to 13th in 2024. Cash flow ranked 3rd in 1986 and 1991 and 37th in 2024, its lowest place in any edition. Locating qualified employees ranked 2nd in 2020 and 32nd in 2012. The cost of supplies and inventories was 19th in 1996 and 2nd in 2024, the highest it has ranked in any edition.

How far ahead the first one is

In 2024, health insurance’s average score was 2.58 on the 1-to-7 scale, clearly ahead of the second-ranked item at 3.05. Below it the list is tight: the items ranked 2nd to 10th sit within 0.27 points of each other, so their order can turn on small differences. The share rating each one critical tells a similar story: 40.5% for health insurance, and 28.0% for the next highest, locating qualified employees.

What to take from this if you run a small one

The problems that never leave the top of this list are costs set largely outside the business: what health cover costs, and what the federal and state governments take from business income. The ones that come and go, like interest rates, fuel, hiring and cash flow, have moved a long way across the editions. That suggests a practical split for an owner’s own list. The permanent ones are worth building into the plan as fixed features, budgeted for every year, rather than treated as a bad patch to wait out. The moving ones are worth watching: the rankings show how far they can travel in a few years.

Three limits worth holding. These are rankings, so they show which problems owners rate as worse than others, not how bad any one is in absolute terms. The respondents are NFIB members, not every small business. And the list changes a little between editions, so a few items are compared across slightly different wordings, as noted under the first chart.

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This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.