Half of U.S. Business Owners Satisfied With Local Climate; Dissatisfaction Drives Relocation Plans

Nearly half of America's business owners say they are content with their city or town as a place to operate. The other half are either unhappy or sitting on the fence. This split, revealed in Gallup's latest survey of business owners conducted over two months in late 2025, hints at a deeper sorting happening across the country—one that could reshape which communities thrive and which ones lose the enterprises that anchor their economies.

The survey, part of Gallup's three-year Pathways to Wealth project funded by JPMorganChase and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, asked business owners to rate 11 different aspects of their local business environment. Forty-eight percent expressed overall satisfaction with their area. Thirteen percent were actively dissatisfied. The remaining 39 percent occupied the middle ground, neither pleased nor troubled. When Gallup dug into what actually shapes these feelings, the results challenged conventional wisdom. Real estate costs and state and local taxes—the complaints you hear most often from business owners—turned out to be poor predictors of overall satisfaction. Forty-two percent of owners said commercial and residential real estate costs discourage business development, and 35 percent said tax rates were too high. Yet these grievances did not strongly correlate with whether an owner felt good or bad about their area overall. What mattered far more were things like access to customers, the presence of business-to-business support networks such as chambers of commerce, nonprofit support services, the regulatory environment, and the quality of government services.

The real alarm emerges when you look at who is actually planning to leave. Across the country, just 5 percent of business owners said they were likely to relocate for business reasons within the next 12 months. But that figure masks a sharp divide. Among owners who held a negative view of their local business climate, 11 percent said they were likely to leave—more than double the baseline. The number climbs even higher when you isolate a specific group: business owners who were both dissatisfied with their local area and expecting their revenue to grow by the end of 2025. Nineteen percent of this group said they were likely to relocate. By contrast, only 5 percent of owners who expected growth but were satisfied or neutral about their area said they planned to move.

This pattern suggests something counterintuitive. It is not struggling businesses fleeing hostile environments. It is successful ones. A growing business owner who feels constrained by local conditions—whether because of regulations, lack of support services, or simply a sense that the area does not value enterprise—is far more likely to seek greener pastures. An owner whose business is stagnating may lack the resources or confidence to move. The owner whose business is thriving and who feels underappreciated or hampered by local policy has both the means and the motivation to go.

For cities and towns, this carries real weight. Small businesses employ millions of Americans and generate sales taxes, income taxes, and the goods and services that make communities function. Losing even a modest number of successful enterprises can hollow out a local economy. The Gallup data suggests that communities with the least satisfied business owners face the greatest risk. Over one in ten dissatisfied owners are likely to leave. Among the subset of dissatisfied owners whose businesses are growing, that rises to nearly one in five.

The implication for local governments is clear but perhaps not obvious. Cutting taxes or reducing commercial real estate costs might feel like the direct solution, but the data does not support that as the primary lever. Instead, the owners who stay and thrive seem to value access to customers, the presence of peer networks and professional support, a regulatory environment that does not feel arbitrary or burdensome, and government services that actually work. These are the conditions that correlate most strongly with satisfaction. They are also, notably, things that require attention and investment rather than simply lower rates. A city that wants to keep its successful small businesses may need to think less about tax competition and more about whether it has built the infrastructure—both literal and social—that makes running a business there feel like a good bet.