The U.S. Census Bureau counted 531,423 new business applications in June 2026, seasonally adjusted, the most recent month it has published. Software companies made up about one in forty of them. The other thirty-nine were retailers, general contractors, consultants, restaurants and clinics, and a meaningful share of them are on a track that predicts they will actually hire. Which means a meaningful share of this month's new business owners are about to need a piece of software that nobody on their own payroll can build.
What a business application actually is
Business Formation Statistics (BFS) is a monthly Census Bureau release built in research collaboration with the Federal Reserve Board, the Atlanta Fed, the University of Maryland and the University of Notre Dame. It counts applications for an Employer Identification Number filed on IRS Form SS-4, minus the ones that clearly aren't a new operating business (estate and trust filings, tax liens, applications with no usable location). The Bureau then splits that pool into four nested series. Business Applications (BA) is everything. High-Propensity Business Applications (HBA) is the subset whose characteristics, per the Bureau's own methodology, predict a high rate of turning into a business that actually runs payroll: a corporate legal structure, stated hiring plans, a first wages-paid date, or a NAICS code in specific industries such as food service, parts of construction and manufacturing, retail, health care, and professional or educational services. Business Applications with Planned Wages (WBA) and From Corporations (CBA) narrow further still.
For June 2026, released July 9, 2026: 531,423 total applications (up 1.1% from May), 149,714 high-propensity (28.2% of the total, up 1.9%), 35,695 with planned wages, and 43,346 from corporations.
Where the 531,000 applications actually landed
| Sector (NAICS) | June 2026 applications | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Retail trade | 97,096 | 18.3% |
| Professional services | 82,990 | 15.6% |
| Other services | 44,314 | 8.3% |
| Construction | 48,933 | 9.2% |
| Administrative and support | 36,909 | 6.9% |
| Transportation and warehousing | 34,512 | 6.5% |
| Health care and social assistance | 33,436 | 6.3% |
| Accommodation and food services | 28,777 | 5.4% |
| Real estate | 26,565 | 5.0% |
| Information (software, publishing, telecom) | 12,999 | 2.4% |
| All other sectors combined | 84,892 | 16.0% |
Retail and professional services alone account for a third of everything filed that month. Construction, other services, administrative support, transport, health care, food service and real estate make up most of the rest. Information, the sector that actually contains software, accounted for 12,999 applications, 2.4% of the total. It grew 4.7% from May, faster than most of the larger sectors above it, off a base small enough that the growth barely moves the total.
The 2.4% and the 97.6%: a reversed intuition
If you build software for a living, most of the businesses you hear about are also building software, because that is who shows up in a feed of funding announcements and product launches. The Census data says the opposite is true of new business formation generally: 97.6% of June's applications were for something other than a software company. A retailer, a specialty contractor, a clinic and a logistics operator do not need to become technology companies to need technology. They need the systems that run a modern business (inventory that stays accurate across two locations, a booking calendar that does not double-book, a quoting tool that does not live in someone's inbox), and almost none of them can build those systems themselves. That gap, not a shortage of software companies, is where a non-technical founder's next hire actually comes from.
The subset actually likely to hire
Not every application matters equally here. The 71.8% of June's applications that are not high-propensity are mostly sole proprietors and side projects with no stated plan to run payroll, and most of them never will. The 149,714 that are high-propensity, and especially the 43,346 filed as corporations and the 35,695 that already name a first wages-paid date, are the ones the Bureau's own model expects to become real employer businesses. Its projections say 29,741 of June's applications will have payroll within four quarters, and 41,042 within eight, both projections up slightly from May (0.7% and 1.3%). Those are the founders who, within a year or two, are running a real operation with real customers and no development team, in an industry that has nothing to do with software.
A worked example
Consider a fourteen-person specialty hardware retailer that files its EIN this spring on a bank loan and the owner's savings, one of the roughly 97,000 retail applications Census counted that month. Six months in, inventory lives in a spreadsheet that two people update by hand, online orders come through a marketplace that takes a cut on every sale, and the owner has stopped answering "which products actually make money" because the honest answer takes a day to work out. Nothing about this business is a software problem in the way a VP of Engineering would use that phrase. It is a business that needs three specific pieces of software (inventory synced across a website and a storefront, a margin dashboard, order status a customer can check without calling) built by someone else, on a fixed scope, because the owner's job is running a hardware store, not managing a codebase.
Where a fixed-scope build is the wrong answer
This data doesn't argue that every new business needs a development partner. The 71.8% of applications with no stated hiring plan mostly need off-the-shelf tools, not a custom build, because there is no operation yet to justify the cost of one. A founder without a funded, scoped project (a specific system, a budget, a timeline) is not ready for a discovery call either; that conversation works better after the idea has money and a shape behind it. And a founder who already has a technical co-founder or an in-house engineer has already solved the problem this piece is describing. The honest fit is narrower than "any new business": a funded, non-technical founder whose operation has outgrown spreadsheets and marketplace fees, in one of the 97.6% of industries that Census counts every month and that never show up in a funding headline.
That is most of the 531,423 businesses the Census Bureau counted in June, and it will be most of whatever number it counts in July. If your build fits that description, what actually goes into scoping a fixed-price build is the more useful next read, and the four things to keep in your own name covers what to protect before you sign anything. If the spreadsheet-and-marketplace stage is starting to look like the bottleneck itself, we scope every engagement individually against fixed-scope, dedicated-team or staff-augmentation work, with transparent pricing and an itemised estimate within 48 hours of a call.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau: Business Formation Statistics, June 2026 (Release CB26-115, published July 9, 2026; accessed August 8, 2026)
- U.S. Census Bureau: Business Formation Statistics Monthly Data Release, June 2026 (published July 9, 2026)
- U.S. Census Bureau: Business Formation Statistics program page (methodology and release schedule, accessed August 8, 2026)