Small Business Expo released its 2026 State of Small Business Report in May 2026, and the headline finding is that 82.2 percent of owners are confident about their growth over the next six months. The Small Business Expo Research Team based the figures on responses from 11,426 U.S. owners, with the report timed to land during National Small Business Week.
The numbers ran counter to the cash-flow gloom that dominated April surveys. Self-employed owners and microbusiness operators reading the report should focus less on the confidence headline and more on the demand and hiring details beneath it, because that is where the practical takeaways for solopreneurs are.
What The Report Actually Found
Beyond the 82.2 percent confidence figure, the survey found that 31 percent of owners plan modest hiring increases over the next year, and another 32 percent already have job openings they cannot fill. Only 1 percent of respondents said they plan to lay off staff, while a much larger 43 percent said they expect to add staff at some point in the next 12 months.
Customer demand was named the top operating challenge by 53.3 percent of respondents, edging out cost pressures and credit access. The Small Business Expo Index, which anchors the report, scored the current environment at 6.8 out of 10, a rating the authors framed as stable but constrained, with cautious growth rather than expansion.
The report also found that 82.2 percent of owners are either testing or planning new growth strategies, suggesting that confidence is being matched by activity rather than complacency. Investments in AI tools, paid acquisition, and product expansion were the tactics owners most often named as those they are actively trying.
Why This Matters For Self-Employed Owners
For solopreneurs and freelancers, the demand stat is the one to internalize. When the majority of microbusinesses identify customer demand, not credit or rent, as the binding constraint, it suggests that marketing spend, lead generation, and pricing decisions matter more right now than tightening operations.
The hiring data also reframes the labor market for self-employed owners. With nearly a third of respondents stuck on open roles, freelance and fractional work have a runway, because owners who cannot hire full-time staff increasingly route the work to contractors instead. That shift creates a near-term opening for service-based solopreneurs who can plug into a small business’s stack on a project basis.
What Self-Employed Owners Should Do Next
Audit your demand pipeline this month. If you are seeing slower lead flow, consider testing a new acquisition channel, raising prices with legacy clients, or repackaging services into a productized offering that converts faster than custom proposals.
Use the hiring data to refresh your pitch for small-business clients. Owners who cannot fill an in-house seat are better candidates for fractional, retainer, or project-based engagements than they were a year ago, and a targeted outreach campaign aimed at the 32 percent stuck on open roles can land high-margin work. Pair that with a review of cash-flow planning data from the OnDeck and Ocrolus reports to make sure your billing terms protect your runway.
What To Watch Next
NFIB and the Census Bureau Small Business Pulse Survey both publish refreshed data later this month, and any divergence between Small Business Expo’s confidence figures and the federal datasets will matter for how analysts read the 2026 outlook. Watch for whether unfilled job openings hold above 30 percent in the next round.
The report’s methodology also leaves room for follow-on data on AI tool adoption among microbusinesses, which the authors flagged as planned for a 2026 release. That update will be the next signal of whether self-employed owners are matching the AI-readiness numbers reported in larger small-business surveys this spring.
Photo by Tim Mossholder: Unsplash
