Micro-Business Invoicing 2026: 78.4% of US Firms Are One-Person Shops [Data]

Key Takeaways

78.4% of all US business establishments had no paid employees in 2023, the highest share on record (US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics).
95% of UK businesses have 0-9 employees, combining the 75% with no staff at all and the 20.2% classed as micro, 1-9 employees (UK government, Business Population Estimates 2025).
99.1% of all EU enterprises are micro enterprises, fewer than 10 employees each (Eurostat, Structural Business Statistics overview).
63.6% of Australian businesses, 1.74 million of 2.73 million, employ nobody but the owner (Australian Bureau of Statistics, June 2025).
22.4% of a micro-business owner’s week goes to admin, legal, and compliance work, about 79% more time than marketing and sales combined (UENI Research, 2024).
US nonemployer businesses grew 2.7% a year on average from 2012 to 2023, more than double the 1.1% growth rate of businesses with employees (US Census Bureau).

78.4% of all US business establishments had no paid employees in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics, the highest share ever recorded. The same pattern shows up everywhere the data exists: 95% of UK businesses have 0-9 employees, 99.1% of EU enterprises qualify as micro enterprises, and 63.6% of Australian businesses employ nobody but the owner. This report gathers the 2026 data on how many micro-businesses actually exist, how fast that population is growing, and what running one does to an owner’s week, specifically the invoicing and admin side of it.

How many businesses are actually micro-businesses?

Almost all of them, once employer firms with dozens or hundreds of staff are set aside. The US Census Bureau’s 2023 Nonemployer Statistics counted 30,427,808 businesses with no paid employees at all, 78.4% of every business establishment in the country. The UK’s 2025 Business Population Estimates found 75% of businesses had no employees and a further 20.2% were micro businesses with 1-9 employees, a combined 95% of the UK’s 5.7 million private sector businesses. Eurostat’s Structural Business Statistics overview put micro enterprises at 99.1% of all EU enterprises, and Australia’s Bureau of Statistics counted 1,735,470 non-employing businesses out of 2,729,648 total, 63.6%, as of 30 June 2025.

Figure 1: Micro and non-employing businesses are the majority business type in the US, UK, EU, and Australia, though each country defines the category slightly differently. Source: US Census Bureau (2023); UK government Business Population Estimates (2025); Eurostat, Structural Business Statistics overview (2023 data); Australian Bureau of Statistics (June 2025).

The definitions do not line up perfectly, and the gap is worth naming. The UK’s own release counts businesses with zero employees separately from the 1-9-employee “micro” band, rather than reporting one blended figure, and its 95% headline is the sum of the two bands. The 63.6% figure used for Australia above is the zero-employee band on its own, which is exactly why it reads lower than the UK’s combined number on the same chart, not because Australia has fewer small operators, but because this report compares Australia’s headline “non-employing” figure against the UK’s headline “0-9 employees” figure rather than two identically scoped bands. Read together, the numbers say the same thing from four angles: the typical business, almost anywhere in the developed world, is one or two people sending their own invoices.

How much of a micro-business owner’s week disappears into admin?

Close to a quarter of it. UENI Research surveyed 837 US businesses with five or fewer employees in 2024 and found administrative, legal, and compliance work consumed 22.4% of a typical owner’s time, roughly 79% more than the time spent on marketing and sales combined. The same survey found the median micro-business owner works 60 hours a week, and 62% work more than 50 hours, which means 22.4% of that week, more than 13 hours, goes to paperwork before a single dollar of new revenue gets chased.

That is not a US-only pattern. A UK survey of 1,000 micro, small, and medium business owners, the annual SME Business Barometer from American Express and Small Business Saturday UK, found owners spend an average of 11 hours a week, about six working days a month, on administrative or finance-related tasks. 54% of respondents said paperwork actively gets in the way of running their business. Separately, Sage’s 2025 research on small business admin found the average small or medium business loses roughly 24 days a year to financial admin, the rough equivalent of working 13 months to get paid for 12.

Figure 2: Administrative, legal, and compliance work eats up nearly a quarter of a micro-business owner’s working week. Source: UENI Research, 2024 (837 US businesses with 5 or fewer employees).

Is the number of micro-businesses growing or shrinking?

Growing, and faster than the business population with paid staff. The US Census Bureau’s own analysis of Nonemployer Statistics found nonemployer establishments expanded at an average of 2.7% a year between 2012 and 2023, more than double the 1.1% annual growth rate for employer businesses over the same period. Growth surged after the pandemic, up 4.9% in 2021 and 4.7% in 2022, before cooling to a 2.1% increase in 2023 as the initial wave of new solo operators leveled off.

Australia’s numbers tell a similar story on a shorter timeline. Non-employing businesses grew between 4.3% and 4.9% in the 2024-25 financial year alone, well ahead of the growth rate for businesses that employ staff, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted a net movement of 32,428 businesses shifting from employing to non-employing status in the same period, owners choosing to shed staff and go solo rather than hire. That movement matters for invoicing specifically: every one of those 32,428 businesses lost whatever back-office support came with having staff on the payroll, and picked up the full administrative load of being a one-person operation instead.

Figure 3: US nonemployer business growth surged after the pandemic before cooling toward pre-pandemic norms. Source: US Census Bureau, “Number of U.S. Nonemployers Grew Faster Than Employer Businesses Nearly Every Year From 2012 to 2023” (2025).

Where does all that admin time actually go?

Mostly into keeping the lights on rather than growing the business. In the same UK SME Business Barometer survey of 1,000 owners, respondents reported spending about six working days a month on admin and finance tasks, nearly double the 3.6 days a month they spent on sales and business development. That gap, admin outpacing growth activity by close to two to one, is the same imbalance UENI’s US data describes with different numbers: time that could go toward winning new clients instead goes toward chasing paperwork the business generates on its own.

Invoicing sits near the center of that admin load specifically, since it is the one task that recurs on every single sale a micro-business makes, and it is also the task most exposed to slow payment once it is done. A BillyPaid invoice is built with a payable link and automated reminders included on every document by default, which targets exactly the six-days-a-month gap this data describes rather than adding another manual step to it.

Figure 4: UK micro, small, and medium business owners spend nearly twice as many working days a month on admin as on sales and growth activity. Source: American Express / Small Business Saturday UK, SME Business Barometer (survey of 1,000 owners).

Does micro-business status change how likely an invoice is to get paid on time?

The broader small-business late-payment data suggests the smallest firms carry the same risk as everyone else, if not more. Intuit QuickBooks’s 2026 Small Business Late Payments Report found 59% of small businesses carried at least one invoice overdue by 30 days or more in 2026, up from 47% a year earlier, and those still waiting were owed an average of $17,700. That report covers small businesses broadly rather than isolating micro-businesses specifically, but the mechanism is the same one micro-business owners describe directly: a one- or two-person operation has no accounts-receivable team to chase a late payer, no cash buffer built from a large client base, and no slack in a 60-hour week to spend more hours on collections. For the country-by-country breakdown of how long invoices take to get paid, see Late Payment Statistics 2026; for what an overdue balance does to a small business once it finally arrives, see Small Business Cash Flow Statistics 2026.

Australia’s non-employing businesses face a structural version of the same exposure. With 63.6% of the country’s businesses now non-employing and that share still climbing, more of the total invoice volume in the economy is flowing through operators who have nobody else to fall back on if a client pays late.

Figure 5: Non-employing businesses now outnumber employing businesses in Australia by nearly two to one. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses (June 2025).

Micro-Business Snapshot by Country

Country	Share of businesses that are micro	Definition used	Source (year)
UK	95%	0-9 employees (75% no employees + 20.2% micro, 1-9)	UK government Business Population Estimates (2025)
EU	99.1%	0-9 employees	Eurostat, Structural Business Statistics overview (2023 data)
US	78.4%	No paid employees	US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics (2023)
Australia	63.6%	No employees	Australian Bureau of Statistics (June 2025)

Table 1: Four countries, four slightly different definitions, one consistent finding: the smallest possible business is also the most common one.

The Bottom Line

Micro-businesses are not a niche segment of the economy; in every market with usable data, they are the majority business type, and their share is still growing faster than the population of businesses with paid staff. That growth is running straight into a time problem: close to a quarter of a US micro-business owner’s week, and roughly six working days a month for UK owners, goes to admin and finance tasks rather than the work that actually brings in revenue. Invoicing sits at the center of that load because it is the one administrative task every single sale generates on its own. Shrinking the time an invoice takes to write, send, and collect on is one of the few levers a solo operator or a two-person shop can pull without hiring anyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a micro-business? Definitions vary by country but converge on the same idea: a business with no employees or a very small handful of them. The UK and EU both define micro as 0-9 employees, the US Census Bureau tracks “nonemployer” establishments (no paid employees at all) as its own category, and Australia’s statistics agency separates “non-employing” businesses from employing ones. By any of these definitions, micro-businesses are the majority business type in every market measured.

What percentage of businesses are micro-businesses? In the US, 78.4% of all business establishments had no paid employees in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics. In the UK, 75% of businesses had no employees and a further 20.2% were micro businesses with 1-9 employees at the start of 2025, a combined 95%, per the government’s 2025 Business Population Estimates. Eurostat’s Structural Business Statistics overview puts micro enterprises at 99.1% of all EU enterprises, and Australia’s Bureau of Statistics counted 63.6% of businesses as non-employing as of June 2025.

How much time does a micro-business owner spend on invoicing and admin? 22.4% of a micro-business owner’s working week goes to administrative, legal, and compliance tasks, roughly 79% more time than the owner spends on marketing and sales, according to UENI Research’s 2024 survey of 837 US businesses with five or fewer employees. Separately, a 1,000-owner UK survey found micro, small, and medium business owners spend about 11 hours a week, roughly six working days a month, on admin and finance tasks alone.

Is the number of micro-businesses growing? Yes, and faster than larger firms. US nonemployer establishments grew at an average of 2.7% a year from 2012 to 2023, versus 1.1% for employer businesses, according to the Census Bureau. In Australia, non-employing businesses grew 4.3% to 4.9% in the 2024-25 financial year, well ahead of the growth rate for businesses with staff, per the Australian Bureau of Statistics.