# The real timeline of a business

How long a new U.S. business takes to hire, to survive and to count as established, from Census, BLS, SBA and GEM figures.

Canonical URL: https://worldenterprise.org/briefs/real-timeline/
Last updated: 2026-10-14
Publisher: World Enterprise, run by World Enterprise Group Incorporated

Founders tend to pick a launch date first and look at the evidence later, if at all. This brief turns that around. It follows the national statistics on new U.S. businesses from the tax-number application to a first employee, through the survival tables, to the point where a global survey counts a company as established.

It reads four public sources: the Census Bureau's formation series, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' survival tables (for all industries, for the Information sector and for professional and technical services), the Small Business Administration's summary of those tables and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Each figure carries its source, and the few that are computed from monthly values are marked.

Each finding is followed by a short, separate note on what it could mean for a plan, then a list of the limits of the data.

Every number is about the whole population of new U.S. businesses. None is a result of a program or firm, and none is a forecast for one company.

## What is inside

- The question this brief answers
- About the evidence
- How many businesses start
- From application to first payroll
- How long new businesses last
- The odds improve with every year
- Software and professional services
- When a business counts as established
- What this means for planning
- What this brief cannot tell you
- Sources