Founder Data ReportThere Are 8.3 Million American Workplaces and Only 6.4 Million American Companies. The 1.9 Million Difference Belongs to Firms That Run More Than One.
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Almost every figure published about American small business counts workplaces, not companies. The Census Bureau publishes both, and the gap between them is 1.9 million locations that are somebody’s second, tenth or four-hundredth.
The United States has 8,298,562 employer workplaces and 6,395,635 employer companies. The difference — 1,902,927 locations, 22.9% of the total — exists because one company can run many places. The gap is not spread evenly. Firms with fewer than twenty employees are 89.4% of all companies and run 69.6% of all workplaces, at 1.0015 locations each in the smallest band. Firms with 5,000 or more employees are 0.035% of companies — one in 2,827 — and run 913,729 workplaces, 11.0% of the country’s total.
- 8,298,562 employer workplaces, 6,395,635 employer companies, 2022.
- 1,902,927 workplaces — 22.9% — are not their company’s first location.
- The average American employer runs 1.30 locations.
- Under five employees: 4,029,041 firms, 4,035,233 locations, 1.0015 each.
- At most 0.15% of firms under five employees run a second location at all.
- 5,000-plus employees: 2,262 firms run 913,729 locations, 404 apiece.
- Those 2,262 firms hold 11.0% of every workplace in the country.
- SUSB counts employers only — businesses with no employees are not in this file.
One company, many addresses
Start with the two totals, because almost nothing you read puts them next to each other. In 2022 the Census Bureau counted 8,298,562 establishments — physical locations with at least one paid employee — owned by 6,395,635 firms. Every firm has at least one location, so exactly 6,395,635 of those establishments are a company’s first. The remaining 1,902,927, 22.9% of the total, are second locations, or fiftieth ones.
That is the whole of the difference, and it is arithmetic rather than estimate: the two columns sit side by side in the same file and subtract exactly. It matters because the establishment count is the one that gets published. When a headline says there are eight million American small businesses, it is counting addresses. The company count is 1,902,927 lower.
Drawn to scale across every employer establishment in the country. The split is exact, not estimated: every firm contributes exactly one first location, so the second segment is the establishment count minus the firm count.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, national file us_state_naics_detailedsizes_2022.txt, employer firms and their establishments, retrieved from the Census static dataset release on September 14, 2026.
The second location arrives later than you would guess
Sort companies by how many people they employ in total, and the number of locations per company rises at every single step of the scale — there is no band anywhere in the range that breaks the pattern. But it starts almost flat. A company with fewer than five employees runs 1.0015 locations. At five to nine it is 1.01. You have to reach the 100-to-149 band before the average company runs two.
After that it climbs fast. A company with 400 to 499 employees averages 9.09 locations. But every band below fifty employees still averages under 1.5 locations, and those bands hold 96.1% of all American employer firms. For the overwhelming majority of companies, the second address is not a decision that has come up yet.
Bars are scaled against the largest value shown (9.09). The scale continues well past this chart: firms with 5,000 or more employees average 404 locations each, which cannot share a linear axis with 1.0015. Bands under two locations per firm are drawn in slate.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, national file us_state_naics_detailedsizes_2022.txt, employer firms and their establishments, retrieved from the Census static dataset release on September 14, 2026.
How many small companies actually run a second address
An average can hide a lot, so here is a harder number. A company with two locations contributes one extra establishment to the count, a company with three contributes two, and so on. That means the count of extra establishments in a band is a ceiling on how many companies in it run more than one place — the true figure is lower whenever any company runs three or more.
Among firms with fewer than five employees there are 4,029,041 companies and only 6,192 extra locations, so at most 0.15% of them operate a second address. At five to nine it is at most 1.33%, at ten to fourteen at most 4.4%. The ceiling stops being useful above 99 employees, where the extras outnumber the companies and it exceeds 100%.
An upper bound, not a measurement. SUSB does not publish a count of single-location firms in this table, so this is derived: extra establishments divided by firms in the band, which is what the share would be if every multi-location company in it ran exactly two. Any company running three or more pushes the true figure below the bar. Bands under 25% are drawn in slate.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, national file us_state_naics_detailedsizes_2022.txt, employer firms and their establishments, retrieved from the Census static dataset release on September 14, 2026.
2,262 companies — one in 2,827 — operate 11.0% of the workplaces in America.
Where the other end of the scale sits
The concentration at the top is the part that is hard to picture. There are 2,262 American firms with 5,000 or more employees. That is 0.035% of all employer firms, one in 2,827. Between them they operate 913,729 establishments — 11.0% of every employer workplace in the United States — which is an average of 404 locations each.
Widen it to every firm with 500 or more employees and the picture holds: 21,041 companies, 0.33% of the total, running 16.7% of the country’s workplaces. That is the number worth carrying: across the whole private employer economy, close to one workplace in six belongs to a company with at least five hundred people on the payroll, and nothing about the building tells you which. That share is not spread evenly across industries — it varies widely enough to be a subject of its own, which is where the companion piece goes.
Both cells are drawn neutrally: this is a contrast between two ends of a scale, not a before and after. The 404-location average is a mean across 2,262 firms and is heavily skewed — the largest national chains operate thousands of locations each, so most firms in the band run fewer than the average.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022, national file us_state_naics_detailedsizes_2022.txt, employer firms and their establishments, retrieved from the Census static dataset release on September 14, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a business and an establishment?
An establishment is a single physical location where work happens. A firm, or enterprise, is the company that owns it, and can own many. The Census Bureau counted 8,298,562 employer establishments and 6,395,635 employer firms in 2022. Most published small business counts are establishment counts, which is why the two numbers differ by 1,902,927.
Does this include self-employed people with no employees?
No. Statistics of U.S. Businesses covers employer businesses only — those with at least one paid employee and a payroll tax filing. Sole proprietors and freelancers with no staff are excluded from both the firm count and the establishment count, so neither figure is the total number of businesses in America.
How many locations does the average American company run?
1.30. That average is pulled upward by a small number of very large firms and describes almost nobody: firms with fewer than five employees average 1.0015 locations, while firms with 5,000 or more average 404. The average is a real figure but it is not a typical one.
Does this mean most small businesses are actually chains?
No, and the data argues the opposite at the small end. Among firms with fewer than five employees, there are only 6,192 more establishments than firms, so at most 0.15% of them could be running a second location — and the true share is lower still, because any firm with three or more locations uses up more than one of those extras. The multi-location pattern belongs to larger firms. This is a derived ceiling rather than a published measurement; SUSB does not publish a single-unit count in this table.
How current is this data?
The reference year is 2022 and the file was released by the Census Bureau in 2025; it is the most recent year of Statistics of U.S. Businesses published as of September 2026. Firm and establishment counts in it are exact counts rather than survey estimates, though cells covering fewer than three firms are withheld and employment values carry a small amount of deliberate statistical noise.
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This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.