The Small Business Administration
Summary
Congress funded the SBA at $1.25 billion for fiscal year 2026 -- about $34.55 per small business the agency's own count identifies. Its 3,771 full-time employees stood behind $45 billion in 7(a) and 504 loans to 85,000 small businesses in FY2025, the agency's last full year of workload data.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
In fiscal year 2025, guaranteed a combined 85,000 loans through its flagship 7(a) and 504 programs, worth $45 billion, and delivered more than $47 billion in capital across all lending programs. Its Surety Bond Guarantee program backed $10.5 billion in contract value for more than 2,200 small businesses, and its Small Business Investment Company program closed the year with a record $53 billion in combined private and SBA-leveraged capital. Its disaster loan program delivered about $6 billion through 51,000 loans to businesses, nonprofits and individuals after declared disasters, reaching survivors in an average of 2.7 days.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $1.25 billion in total new budget authority for SBA's fiscal year 2026 -- $323.1 million for salaries and expenses, $330.0 million for entrepreneurial development (funding the Small Business Development Center and SCORE mentoring networks), $161.0 million for the business loan program, $282.0 million for the disaster loan program, $106.9 million in congressional initiatives, $37.0 million for the Inspector General and $10.1 million for the Office of Advocacy -- funding 3,771 full-time employees, down from FY2025's 6,172 as disaster-surge staffing wound down. Divided across the 36.2 million small businesses SBA's Office of Advocacy counted nationwide in 2025⧉, that is about $34.55 per small business.
View data as table
| Entrepreneurial Development | 330,000 | SBDC, SCORE, Women's Business Centers |
|---|---|---|
| Salaries & Expenses | 323,118 | base agency operations |
| Disaster Loan Program | 282,000 | annual Stafford Act appropriation |
| Business Loan Program | 161,000 | 7(a)/504/microloan administration |
| Congressional Initiatives | 106,862 | S&E, directed spending |
| Inspector General | 37,020 | independent oversight office |
| Office of Advocacy | 10,109 | independent small-business research/advocacy office |
Why is it good for society?
SBA's own explanation for its loan guarantees⧉: private lenders treat small-business lending as too risky on conventional terms, so the guarantee shifts enough risk onto the federal government that banks lend anyway. In FY2025 that mechanism stood behind $45 billion in 7(a) and 504 loans to 85,000 small businesses, plus $10.5 billion in surety bonds for firms too small to bond on the open market. Its disaster loan arm plays a similar role after floods, fires and hurricanes, extending credit when private lenders pull back fastest.
- 's FY2026 budget authority ($1.25B) works out to about $34.55 per U.S. small business (36.2M counted), funding a workforce (3,771 ) that is down 2,401 from FY2025's 6,172 as one-time disaster-surge and pandemic-era staffing wound down.
- FY2025's $45 billion in 7(a)/504 guaranteed loan volume works out to roughly $11.9 million in guaranteed capital per FY2026 agency-wide -- a rough leverage measure, not a literal per-employee loan book, since includes disaster, Inspector General, Advocacy and support staff who never touch a 7(a)/504 file.
Your handles.* Find an -backed lender or check loan eligibility at SBA's Loans page⧉. Get free counseling from a Small Business Development Center near you. Comment on a proposed rule via the Federal Register's SBA page.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov), Organization (2026-01-01) — 's own official page describing its mission, statutory purpose, independent-agency status, headquarters address (409 3rd St., SW, Washington, DC 20416), and history timeline -- the source for this entry's identity paragraph, including the exact founding date (its history timeline states: "President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Small Business Act into law on July 30, 1953, creating a new agency, the U.S. Small Business Administration ()."). Existing Wayback capture from July 12, 2026 used as the one-click original-document link; a fresh Save Page Now request to web.archive.org/save/ returned HTTP 520 (confirmed systemic outage, one probe per project directive, not re-attempted for other documents this session). sba.gov · original document
- U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov), U.S. Small Business Administration Marks 70th Anniversary (2023-07-30) — 's own anniversary release naming the founding statute (the Small Business Act) and President Eisenhower as the signer, in 1953 -- corroborates the founding fact, but this specific page does not itself state the day-level date (July 30); the organization page (doc-sba-organization) is cited for that. Existing July 2026 Wayback capture used as the capture link. sba.gov · original document
- U.S. Small Business Administration, FY 2027 Congressional Budget Justification and FY 2025 Annual Performance Report -- U.S. Small Business Administration (2026-04-03) — 's own congressional budget justification, filed with its FY2027 budget request. Table 1 (Summary of New Budget Authority, p.9) reports FY2026 ENACTED total new budget authority ($1,250,109,000 including the Stafford Act disaster annual appropriation) by appropriations account; Table 9 (Full-Time Equivalent Employees, p.18) reports FY2026 Enacted total (3,771) against FY2025 Actual (6,172) and the FY2027 Request (3,690) -- the standard federal CBJ format, whose historical/enacted-year columns report actuals and enacted levels, not projections. The FY2025 Performance Report narrative (Goal 1, p.21, and disaster recovery section, p.22-23) supplies this entry's FY2025 workload figures (7(a)/504 loan volume, Surety Bond Guarantee, SBIC, disaster loans). Direct sba.gov PDF fetch succeeded; downloaded and parsed locally (pdftotext) to confirm exact table figures against the live document. No existing Wayback snapshot found via the availability API for this exact PDF URL; a fresh Save Page Now capture was not separately attempted (systemic SPN outage already confirmed this session via a different sba.gov URL, one probe per project directive); archiveUrl/capture recorded null, non-blocking. sba.gov
- U.S. Small Business Administration (sba.gov), Loans (2026-01-01) — 's own public description of why its loan guarantee programs exist -- reducing lender risk so small businesses can get funding they otherwise couldn't on conventional terms. Source for this entry's mechanism paragraph (Section 4). Existing July 2026 Wayback capture used as the one-click original-document link. sba.gov · original document
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, 2025 Small Business Profile -- United States (2025-06-30) — Office of Advocacy's own national small business profile, built from Census Bureau Nonemployer Statistics and Statistics of U.S. Businesses (2022 data) -- the source for this entry's per-small-business KPI denominator (36,186,089 small businesses, 99.9% of U.S. businesses). Downloaded and parsed locally (pdftotext) to confirm the exact business-count table. Existing July 2026 Wayback capture used as the capture link. advocacy.sba.gov · original document
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Congress created the Small Business Administration in the Small Business Act of 1953 (Pub. L. 83-163), which President Eisenhower signed into law on July 30, 1953⧉ -- an independent federal agency headquartered at 409 3rd Street SW in Washington, D.C.⧉, charged to "aid, counsel, assist and protect... the interests of small business concerns."