Here’s the good news. Small business earnings rose 75% since January 2025. The increase comes despite President Trump’s tariffs, which threatened to raise business costs and dampen consumer spending.
The data comes from Biz2Credit, a New York City-based online marketplace for small business financing that publishes a monthly Small Business Earnings Report. Biz2Credit analyzes key financial metrics, including annual revenue, operating expenses, business age, credit scores, approval rates, and funding rates. Its report draws on data from over 100,000 completed financing applications submitted between January 2022 and June 2025 through Biz2Credit’s online funding platform.
But here’s the bad news. Monthly earnings remain significantly below levels seen in the previous two years. According to Biz2Credit, average monthly earnings topped out at about $250,000 in the summer of 2023. By June 2024, that figure had dropped to $128,900. This June, the average was just $62,300.
Biz2Credit’s data shows that small business earnings tend to be seasonal with summer being the most lucrative time of year. Factors such as holiday consumer spending, weather-dependent demand, and annual tax cycles often influence earnings patterns. This year, so far at least, has been no different.
The takeaway: While earnings have improved since the start of the year, small businesses are still worse off than they were in each of the prior two years.
Even so, the recent uptick isn’t trivial. At a minimum, it signals that conditions aren’t getting worse. For the moment at least. Though with on again, off again tariff negotiations, there’s no guarantee of smooth sailing from here on out.
The earnings rise isn’t the only reason for growing optimism among small businesses (the National Federation of Independent Business Optimism Index fell by 0.2 in June, though at a 98.6 reading it remains higher than the gauge’s 51-year average of 98). Biz2Credit points to President Trump’s recently signed “Big Beautiful Bill,” enacted on July 4, as a key confidence booster. Additionally, anticipated Federal Reserve interest rate cuts later this year are expected to support further improvement.
Biz2Credit CEO Rohit Arora says taxes have been a significant concern for small business operators. But, he adds, small businesses can now expect greater stability and predictability following the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill. In part, that’s because the Big Beautiful Bill made the small business tax cuts passed in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. And that predictability may help sustain the earnings momentum that started back in January.
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