Wisconsinites filed 7,057 new business applications in September 2026 — +12.6% compared with September 2025. Over the last twelve months, 80,352 applications were filed statewide (+23.3% vs. the previous twelve). 2025, the most recent full year, is the record year so far with 71,475 applications. The Census Bureau projects about 4,123 of a year's Wisconsin applications become employer businesses within four quarters. Source: U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics; this page updates automatically each month.
Free tool: Wisconsin business name search — check whether your business name appears available on the state's records before you file.
Ask Google how many businesses are started in Wisconsin each year and you get raw federal data tables, a university PDF, and news stories from the early 2010s. The state's own filing office hasn't published an entity-type breakdown in over a decade. So we built the page we kept wishing existed: the official numbers, charted, explained, and refreshed automatically every month when the Census Bureau publishes new data. Cite it freely — the methodology and a downloadable dataset are at the bottom.
Key Wisconsin Business Formation Statistics
- 80,352 new business applications in Wisconsin over the last 12 months (through September 2026), +23.3% vs. the prior 12 months.
- 7,057 applications in September 2026 alone (+12.6% year over year).
- 71,475 applications in 2025, the most recent full year — up 90% from 37,551 in 2005, the first full year measured.
- Record year: 2025 (71,475). Record month: July 2026 (8,336).
- 2026 year to date (Jan–Sep): 60,944 applications, +17.0% vs. the same months of 2025.
- 26% of recent applications are "high-propensity" — the kind the Census Bureau judges likely to become employers.
- About 4,123 employer businesses are projected to emerge from a year of Wisconsin applications — roughly 1 in 19.
- Wisconsin accounts for about 1.3% of all U.S. business applications (trailing 12 months).
- Busiest filing month on average: March (~6,912 applications); slowest: December (~4,461). 2021–2025 average.
All figures: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Formation Statistics (Wisconsin series). See methodology for definitions and exact series IDs.
New Business Applications, Month by Month
The cleanest live measure of business formation is the Census Bureau's count of business applications: every application for a federal Employer Identification Number (IRS Form SS-4) that looks like a business rather than, say, an estate or a trust. Nearly every new Wisconsin LLC, corporation, and employer files one, which is what makes the series such a reliable pulse.
The line above is seasonally adjusted, which is the honest way to read a trend — raw monthly counts swing hard with the calendar (more on that below). Hover any point for both numbers.
Two Decades of Wisconsin Business Formation
The long arc is unambiguous: 71,475 applications in 2025 is 90% more than the 37,551 filed in 2005, the first full year the Census Bureau measured. Most of that jump arrived in 2020–2021 and, notably, never gave the gains back.
The structural break is the pandemic. Through the 2010s, Wisconsin formation numbers crept upward; in 2020–2021 they jumped as layoffs, remote work, stimulus savings, and a boom in e‑commerce and gig work pushed a wave of people into business ownership. Economists spent two years debating whether the surge was a blip. The years since have answered: the elevated pace became the new baseline, in Wisconsin as nationally. (For how the LLC itself became the default vehicle for all these ventures, see our history of the LLC and Wisconsin's 2023 statute rewrite.)
| Year | Business applications | Change vs. prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 (record) | 71,475 | +15.1% |
| 2024 | 62,118 | −4.9% |
| 2023 | 65,293 | +1.3% |
| 2022 | 64,426 | −1.2% |
| 2021 | 65,238 | +23.4% |
| 2020 | 52,846 | +20.7% |
| 2019 | 43,789 | −3.6% |
| 2018 | 45,420 | +10.4% |
| 2017 | 41,128 | +9.6% |
| 2016 | 37,528 | +1.0% |
| 2015 | 37,170 | +3.2% |
| 2014 | 36,014 | +1.5% |
| 2013 | 35,468 | −1.4% |
| 2012 | 35,982 | −0.1% |
| 2011 | 36,014 | −1.4% |
| 2010 | 36,525 | +4.7% |
| 2009 | 34,898 | −6.4% |
| 2008 | 37,266 | −0.2% |
| 2007 | 37,332 | −1.1% |
| 2006 | 37,730 | +0.5% |
| 2005 | 37,551 | — |
Annual totals are the sum of monthly, not-seasonally-adjusted counts — i.e., actual applications filed. 2026 is excluded until all twelve months are published.
Applications vs. Actual Businesses: Reading the Numbers Honestly
A business application is a statement of intent, not a storefront. Three Census concepts, in plain English:
- Business applications — all EIN applications flagged as business-related. Includes every LLC that gets an EIN, but also sole proprietors formalizing, and some entities that never launch.
- High-propensity applications — the subset whose characteristics (corporate entity type, a stated date for paying first wages, industries that almost always hire) historically lead to a payroll business.
- Projected business formations — the Census Bureau's model of how many of a month's applications will become employer businesses within four quarters.
Of Wisconsin's roughly 80,352 applications in the last year, the Census Bureau classifies about 26% as "high-propensity" — applications with characteristics (a corporate entity type, a stated hiring date, certain industries) that historically lead to payroll. Its model projects about 4,123 employer businesses will emerge from a year of Wisconsin applications within four quarters — roughly 1 employer for every 19 applications. For scale, Wisconsin files about 1.3% of all U.S. business applications.
Resist the gloomy misreading of that ratio. “1 employer business per N applications” is not a failure rate: the projection only counts businesses that hire employees. A freelance designer's single-member LLC, a rental-property LLC, a solo consultant grossing six figures — all are real, operating businesses that never appear in payroll data. Non-employer businesses outnumber employer businesses several times over nationwide; most new Wisconsin businesses are built to stay solo.
About to Be One of These Statistics?
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When Wisconsinites Start Businesses
Averaging the last five complete years (2021–2025), March is Wisconsin's busiest month for new business applications, averaging 6,912 filings, while December is the quietest at 4,461.
| Month | Avg. applications | Relative volume |
|---|---|---|
| January | 6,213 | |
| February | 5,417 | |
| March (busiest) | 6,912 | |
| April | 6,060 | |
| May | 5,746 | |
| June | 5,312 | |
| July | 4,919 | |
| August | 5,263 | |
| September | 5,081 | |
| October | 5,261 | |
| November | 5,065 | |
| December | 4,461 |
Two forces shape that calendar. The first is tax season: preparing a return is the moment a side hustle's income shows up on a Schedule C — and the moment its owner starts asking about liability and write-offs (our LLC vs. sole proprietorship comparison is that conversation). The second is the clean-slate appeal of a January 1 start, which simplifies the first year's books and leads founders who get serious in Q4 to hold their filing for the new year. Neither is a reason to wait: Wisconsin processes online formation filings in days, so the gap between deciding and legally existing is short at any time of year (here's the realistic start-to-operational timeline).
How Many of These Are LLCs?
Here is the honest gap in the public record. EIN-based application counts don't say which entity type a founder chose, and the Wisconsin DFI — the office that actually receives every Articles of Organization — no longer publishes annual formation statistics. The most recent official breakdown we can find is from 2011, when the DFI reported 33,190 business formation filings, of which more than 25,000 — roughly three out of four — were LLCs, alongside about 2,500 business corporations and 1,500 nonstock (nonprofit) corporations. A decade earlier, in 2001, the DFI counted 13,945 new LLCs — the entity was already the clear favorite within ten years of Wisconsin authorizing it.
PolitiFact Wisconsin flagged the same problem back in 2013: beyond the DFI's own volatile filing counts, there was no up-to-date dataset documenting business creations. For entity-type detail, that's still true. Everything we see as a Madison filing firm says the LLC's share has only grown since 2011 — it is the default choice for nearly every new small business that walks in our door (and the $130 Wisconsin filing is among the cheaper ones in the country, as our full cost breakdown shows). But we won't dress an observation up as a statistic: until the DFI publishes counts again, treat any precise “LLCs formed in Wisconsin last year” number you see elsewhere with suspicion.
Methodology, Sources & How to Cite This Page
Every number above comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics (BFS), which derives business application counts from IRS EIN applications. The Wisconsin series begins in July 2004. We retrieve the official series via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), recompute the statistics, and regenerate this page's figures automatically each month — the “data through” badge at the top always tells you the latest month included. Annual totals are sums of monthly not-seasonally-adjusted counts (actual filings); trend charts and ratios use the seasonally adjusted series and say so.
- Monthly applications (actual): Census BFS series BABATOTALNSAWI; seasonally adjusted: BABATOTALSAWI
- High-propensity applications: BAHBATOTALSAWI; projected formations within 4 quarters: BFPBF4QTOTALSAWI
- Program documentation: U.S. Census Bureau, Business Formation Statistics
- Historical DFI entity counts: Wisconsin DFI 2011 figures as reported by BizTimes (2012); 2001 LLC count via BizTimes (2002); data-gap context via PolitiFact Wisconsin (2013)
- Also tracking this series: UW–Madison's Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy publishes a monthly narrative brief on Wisconsin business formations.
Journalists, researchers, and students are welcome to reuse these figures with attribution: “Anchor Filings, Wisconsin Business Formation Statistics, based on U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics” with a link to this page. The compiled dataset — annual totals, the last 24 months, seasonal averages, and the full raw series — is downloadable as JSON (CC BY 4.0; the underlying federal data is public domain). Spot a discrepancy? Email support@anchorfilings.com and we'll correct it.
Census Bureau figures are estimates and are revised; this page reflects the series as published on its last refresh date. This page is general information, not legal or financial advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
In 2025, 71,475 business applications were filed in Wisconsin, per the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics. Over the most recent 12 months of data (through September 2026), the total is 80,352. An "application" is a federal EIN application (IRS Form SS-4) identified as business-related, so it counts every kind of new venture — LLCs, corporations, and sole proprietors alike.
The Census Bureau projects that roughly 4,123 of a year's Wisconsin applications will become employer businesses (with payroll) within four quarters — about 1 in 19. That ratio is not a failure rate: most small businesses, including the typical single-member LLC, operate without employees and simply never appear in payroll data.
The Wisconsin DFI does not currently publish entity-type counts. The last official breakdown it released was for 2011: 33,190 business formation filings, of which more than 25,000 — roughly three out of four — were LLCs. Entity filings at the DFI and EIN-based business applications are different measures, so the charts on this page cannot be read as an LLC count.
All figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics (series for Wisconsin, retrieved via FRED). The page currently reflects data through September 2026 and is refreshed automatically when the Census Bureau publishes a new month, typically around the middle of the following month. The underlying numbers are downloadable as JSON below.
