Founder Data ReportOnly 16% of U.S. Business Owners Studied Management. The Other Five in Six Are Doing the Job Anyway.
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The Census Bureau asked 4.24 million owners of American employer businesses what they studied. 16.3% named a management or administration field. The gap is widest in the industry whose owners are the most educated of all.
The Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey asks every owner of an employer business what their degree is in. Of the 4,236,520 owners it counted in 2023, 689,280 — 16.3% — hold a bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate or professional degree in a management or administration field. 55% of owners hold a degree of some kind, so this is not a story about education. It is a story about which education. Among owners who do hold a degree, 29.9% studied management and 70.1% hold no degree in it, then took on payroll, pricing, hiring, cash flow and strategy regardless.
- 16.3% of all 4.24 million owners hold a management or administration degree. 83.7% do not.
- 54.5% hold a degree of some kind — the shortfall is the field, not the credential.
- Management is the single most common field at 29.9%, ahead of health at 13.8% — and still a minority of degree holders.
- 11 of the 20 published sectors sit at or above the 16.3% national rate; 9 sit below it.
- Health care and social assistance owners are the most credentialed in the country (88.6% hold a degree) and the least likely to have studied management (5.6%).
The credential is not the missing piece
It would be easy to read 16.3% as a story about owners without much schooling. The file says otherwise. 54.5% of the owners of American employer businesses hold a bachelor’s degree or better — a higher share than the adult population at large. What separates them from the job they actually do is not whether they went, but what they went for.
Split the whole owner population once and the shape is clear. 16.3% studied management or administration. 38.1% hold a degree in some other field entirely. 45.5% hold no bachelor’s or graduate degree at all. Everyone in the last two groups is running a business they were never formally taught to run.
One bar, 4,236,520 owners, four groups that add to the whole. 7,417 owners hold a degree but did not report the field and are shown separately rather than assigned.
U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Business Owners, questions EDUC and FLDEDUC, all owners of employer firms.
Management is the most common field, and it is still a minority
Among the 2,303,150 owners who hold a degree and named its field, management and administration is the largest single answer at 29.9%. Nothing else comes close — health is second at 13.8%, 16.1 points behind, a gap that clears the survey’s own standard errors comfortably. But the largest single answer is still under a third. The other 70.1% of degree-holding owners hold no management degree at all; they trained as engineers, clinicians, lawyers, artists and scientists. Owners with degrees in two fields are counted under both, which is why the field shares below sum to 108.9% rather than 100%.
Bars are drawn on a 0–32% axis, not 0–100. Orange marks the management and administration field; every other field is slate. An owner holding degrees in two fields is counted in both, so these 17 shares sum to 108.9%, not 100% — each bar reads as the share of degree-holding owners with a degree in that field.
U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Business Owners, question FLDEDUC. Base is the 2,303,150 owners who hold a degree and reported its field.
55% of American business owners hold a degree. 16% hold one in running a business.
The most educated owners in the country are the least trained for it
By sector the rate runs from 37.7% down to 5.6%, and the two ends are not where you would guess. Finance and insurance sits highest — unsurprising, since its owners studied the adjacent subject. Health care and social assistance sits lowest, and that is the finding: 88.6% of its owners hold a degree, the highest of any sector in the country, and 5.6% of them studied management. The gap between the two ends clears the standard errors.
That is the shape of the thing. A dentist, a physical therapist or a clinic owner spent years being trained — in medicine. The payroll, the lease, the hiring and the pricing arrived with the practice, and no part of that training covered them. The pattern repeats wherever the craft itself demands a credential: 11 of the 20 sectors sit at or above the national 16.3%, and the ones below it are largely the trades and the professions.
Orange marks a sector at or above the national 16.3%; slate marks one below it. An owner whose firm operates in more than one sector is counted in each, so the sector counts sum to 100.5% of the national total — the rates within each sector are unaffected, but the column must not be added up. 7,417 owners nationally who hold a degree but did not report its field are excluded from every denominator here, including the national figure. “Industries not classified” is a residual group of 1,424 owners, not a trade, and is shown only for completeness.
U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Business Owners, question FLDEDUC by 2022 NAICS sector. All 20 published sectors shown, including the ranges 31-33, 44-45 and 48-49.
What this does and does not say
It does not say that owners without a management degree run worse businesses. The survey counts credentials, not competence, and it has nothing to say about outcomes. A trade apprenticeship, an associate degree in business, twenty years working for someone else, or a parent’s shop floor are all real training and none of them appear in this file. What the file does establish is the scale of the population learning the commercial half of the job somewhere other than a classroom: 3,547,240 people.
Two limits belong on the page. The field-of-degree question is asked only of owners who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, so the 45.5% without one are grouped rather than described. And these are owners of employer businesses — firms with at least one person on payroll. Sole proprietors with no employees are a much larger population and are not counted here.
U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Business Owners, questions EDUC and FLDEDUC.
Frequently Asked Questions
What share of U.S. business owners have a degree in business or management?
16.3% of the 4,236,520 owners of American employer businesses hold a bachelor's, master's, doctorate or professional degree in a management or administration field, according to the Census Bureau's 2023 Annual Business Survey. Among owners who hold any degree, the figure is 29.9%.
Do most business owners have a college degree?
Yes. 54.5% of owners of employer businesses hold a bachelor's degree or higher. The shortfall is in the subject, not the credential: most of those degrees are in fields other than management.
What is the most common field of study among business owners?
Management and administration, at 29.9% of owners who hold a degree and reported a field. Health is second at 13.8%.
Which industries have the fewest owners trained in management?
Health care and social assistance, at 5.6% of its owners — even though 88.6% of them hold a degree, the highest share of any sector. Finance and insurance is highest at 37.7%.
Does this mean untrained owners run worse businesses?
The survey does not measure that. It records what owners studied, not how their businesses perform, and it cannot see apprenticeships, associate degrees or years spent working in the trade before buying into it.
Published by The Lonely Entrepreneur — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. lonelyentrepreneur.com
This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.