Measuring trends in the small business economy

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index is a monthly summary measure of the state of the U.S. small business economy. It is an equally weighted average of ten seasonally adjusted variables from the Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) survey, and it is based to its average value in 1986 (1986=100).

The Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) survey is NFIB’s monthly assessment of the U.S. small business economy and its near-term prospects. It was first mailed in October 1973, was issued quarterly until January 1986, and has been monthly since.

The ten components are seasonally adjusted, summed, divided by 10, and added to 100. The Index is based to its average value in 1986, the middle of the 1980s expansion and the beginning of the monthly NFIB time series.

The ten components are plans to increase employment, plans to make capital outlays, plans to increase inventories, expect economy to improve, expect real sales higher, current inventory, current job openings, expected credit conditions, now a good time to expand, and earnings trends.

The SBET Index is released on the second Tuesday of each month at 6:00 AM ET.

Yes. NFIB also publishes SBET data by major industry and by geographic region. These data are published quarterly, and the industry data appear in January, April, July, and October. Each quarterly figure combines the prior three months of survey data, with each month weighted equally.

Use the Indicators page to build custom time series and export them to Excel or PDF, the MicroData page to explore survey question responses over time by industry, employee size, region, and state, or the Developers page for the SBET REST API, which returns Optimism Index values and index components in JSON format from 1974 to the current month.

The NFIB Research Center produces Small Business Economic Trends. NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business, is the largest small business trade association in the United States.