Wyoming has the fastest business formation in America and the slowest economic growth
Filings and output move together in almost every state. Removing Wyoming from the data makes the relationship stronger, which is the clearest evidence yet for what its filings actually are.
Business filings and economic growth move together, almost everywhere
Growth in business applications since 2019 against growth in real GDP over the same period. Each point is a state. The fitted line excludes Wyoming.
Association, not cause. States that grew faster had more people in them starting more businesses; nothing here identifies which way that runs, and a common driver such as population growth would produce the same picture.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts (SAGDP9), with U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics. Retrieved August 24, 2026. Analysis by DFX Intelligence.
What the data shows
The Observatory’s formation dataset established that Americans are filing to start businesses at roughly twice the rate of 2019, and that fewer than three in ten of those filings carry the characteristics that precede hiring anyone. The obvious next question is whether any of it is real: whether a state that adds filings adds output, or whether the boom is paperwork that never becomes an economy.
It is real. Across the fifty states and the District of Columbia, growth in business applications and growth in real GDP are positively associated, with a rank correlation of 0.39. The ten states that added filings fastest grew their economies by a median 18.5% between 2019 and 2025. The ten that added them slowest grew by 7.7%. That is not a subtle gap.
This is worth saying plainly because the cynical reading was the one we expected to find and it is not what the data supports. A filing is not a business, and most filings do not become employers, and the states doing the most filing are still the states whose economies grew the most.
And then there is Wyoming
Wyoming filed 145 business applications per 1,000 residents last year, nine times the median state, and its filings are up +346% since 2019. Both are the highest in the country by a wide margin. Its real economy grew +3.7% over the same period, which is the lowest in the country.
The cleanest way to see how unusual that is: removing Wyoming from the dataset makes the relationship between filings and growth stronger, from 0.39 to 0.48. A single observation that suppresses a correlation is an observation that does not belong to the same process as the rest. Wyoming is not a state where lots of businesses are being started and struggling. It is a state where lots of entities are being registered and operated somewhere else.
Real GDP growth since 2019, by state
Chained 2017 dollars, so this is not a chart of inflation. Wyoming is marked.
- Florida+28.5%+83%
- Arizona+26.7%+102%
- Texas+26.0%+95%
- Idaho+25.2%+64%
- Utah+24.9%+71%
- Montana+23.2%+121%
- Washington+21.9%+71%
- Tennessee+21.4%+102%
- New Mexico+20.4%+148%
- North Carolina+20.1%+97%
- South Carolina+20.0%+105%
- Nevada+19.8%+59%
- Colorado+19.4%+88%
- Arkansas+18.4%+76%
- Nebraska+17.8%+57%
- Maine+17.1%+47%
- Delaware+17.0%+133%
- Alabama+15.7%+84%
- Virginia+15.3%+71%
- New Hampshire+14.7%+66%
- Georgia+14.4%+66%
- California+14.1%+67%
- Indiana+14.0%+87%
- Massachusetts+13.7%+46%
- Mississippi+12.7%+98%
- Missouri+11.4%+98%
- South Dakota+11.4%+56%
- New Jersey+11.2%+56%
- New York+11.1%+42%
- Oregon+10.9%+59%
- Iowa+10.8%+66%
- Vermont+10.7%+38%
- Kentucky+10.1%+135%
- Minnesota+9.8%+67%
- Alaska+9.8%+58%
- Kansas+9.2%+86%
- Michigan+9.2%+78%
- Ohio+8.9%+98%
- Maryland+8.4%+44%
- Wisconsin+7.9%+82%
- West Virginia+7.8%+80%
- North Dakota+7.0%+28%
- Oklahoma+6.7%+68%
- Rhode Island+6.7%+36%
- Illinois+6.5%+70%
- Connecticut+6.5%+63%
- Pennsylvania+6.1%+66%
- Hawaii+6.0%+25%
- Louisiana+5.4%+50%
- District of Columbia+4.9%+32%
- Wyoming+3.7%+346%
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts (SAGDP9), with U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics. Retrieved August 24, 2026. Analysis by DFX Intelligence.
What this does not tell you
It does not tell you that starting businesses causes growth, or that growth causes people to start businesses. Both are plausible, both are probably partly true, and a third factor that drives both, such as people moving to a state, would produce exactly this picture. A rank correlation of 0.39 is a real relationship and a long way from a mechanism.
It also cannot tell you what Wyoming’s registered entities do, only that whatever they do is not showing up in Wyoming’s output. The state’s corporate statutes are its own export, and an entity registered there is frequently operated from somewhere else, which is the service being purchased. That reading is an inference from a filing rate nine times the median against a population of 589,000. It is well supported and it is not a measurement.
The full data
| State | Filings vs 2019 | Real GDP growth | Filings / 1,000 | High-propensity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wyoming | +346% | +3.7% | 144.7 | 24.2% |
| New Mexico | +148% | +20.4% | 20.6 | 26.5% |
| Kentucky | +135% | +10.1% | 16.6 | 22.7% |
| Delaware | +133% | +17.0% | 57.6 | 34.9% |
| Montana | +121% | +23.2% | 28.2 | 26.5% |
| South Carolina | +105% | +20.0% | 18.4 | 24.7% |
| Tennessee | +102% | +21.4% | 15.7 | 27.0% |
| Arizona | +102% | +26.7% | 20.2 | 24.7% |
| Mississippi | +98% | +12.7% | 20.8 | 23.8% |
| Ohio | +98% | +8.9% | 15.5 | 23.9% |
| Missouri | +98% | +11.4% | 18.4 | 23.5% |
| North Carolina | +97% | +20.1% | 17.7 | 26.7% |
| Texas | +95% | +26.0% | 18.5 | 26.1% |
| Colorado | +88% | +19.4% | 27.2 | 26.0% |
| Indiana | +87% | +14.0% | 14.1 | 27.3% |
| Kansas | +86% | +9.2% | 14.4 | 27.3% |
| Alabama | +84% | +15.7% | 14.9 | 24.2% |
| Florida | +83% | +28.5% | 30.2 | 28.4% |
| Wisconsin | +82% | +7.9% | 13.3 | 25.1% |
| West Virginia | +80% | +7.8% | 10.4 | 29.5% |
| Michigan | +78% | +9.2% | 16.5 | 24.8% |
| Arkansas | +76% | +18.4% | 14.5 | 27.1% |
| Washington | +71% | +21.9% | 14.6 | 28.3% |
| Utah | +71% | +24.9% | 23.6 | 25.2% |
| Virginia | +71% | +15.3% | 16.8 | 26.1% |
| Illinois | +70% | +6.5% | 15.6 | 28.8% |
| Oklahoma | +68% | +6.7% | 16.8 | 29.8% |
| California | +67% | +14.1% | 15.3 | 35.9% |
| Minnesota | +67% | +9.8% | 13.1 | 27.2% |
| Pennsylvania | +66% | +6.1% | 12.8 | 27.8% |
| New Hampshire | +66% | +14.7% | 13.9 | 28.2% |
| Georgia | +66% | +14.4% | 24.6 | 25.2% |
| Iowa | +66% | +10.8% | 11.7 | 27.0% |
| Idaho | +64% | +25.2% | 18.0 | 29.3% |
| Connecticut | +63% | +6.5% | 14.8 | 27.3% |
| Oregon | +59% | +10.9% | 14.9 | 28.4% |
| Nevada | +59% | +19.8% | 21.0 | 26.1% |
| Alaska | +58% | +9.8% | 17.2 | 25.3% |
| Nebraska | +57% | +17.8% | 12.0 | 28.1% |
| South Dakota | +56% | +11.4% | 14.1 | 27.5% |
| New Jersey | +56% | +11.2% | 18.1 | 27.2% |
| Louisiana | +50% | +5.4% | 17.7 | 24.0% |
| Maine | +47% | +17.1% | 10.6 | 33.4% |
| Massachusetts | +46% | +13.7% | 11.9 | 34.9% |
| Maryland | +44% | +8.4% | 17.3 | 27.8% |
| New York | +42% | +11.1% | 16.0 | 37.5% |
| Vermont | +38% | +10.7% | 12.9 | 31.2% |
| Rhode Island | +36% | +6.7% | 11.3 | 31.4% |
| District of Columbia | +32% | +4.9% | 22.7 | 27.5% |
| North Dakota | +28% | +7.0% | 12.1 | 30.6% |
| Hawaii | +25% | +6.0% | 13.0 | 29.4% |
Methodology and sources
Business formation against real economic growth, by state
- Produced by
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts (SAGDP9), with U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation StatisticsTIER A
- Retrieved
- August 24, 2026 at 11:40 PM UTC
- Observations
- 51 rows from 5 upstream series or queries
Real GDP by state in millions of chained 2017 dollars, 2019 to 2025, expressed as percent change, joined by state to the trailing-twelve-month business application counts and seven-year application growth from the Observatory's business-formation-by-state dataset. Spearman rank correlation is reported because the application distribution has a single extreme value.
- Real GDP is in chained 2017 dollars, so this is not a comparison of nominal values across a period of high inflation.
- Association, not cause. States that grew faster had more people starting businesses and more businesses to start; nothing here identifies which way that runs, and a common driver such as population growth would produce the same picture.
- Business applications are measured to July 2026 and real GDP to the latest published year, so the windows are close but not identical.
- completeness51 of 51 states matched to the formation dataset
- real_vs_nominalunits 'Millions of chained 2017 dollars' are inflation-adjusted, so a 6-year comparison is real rather than a chart of prices
- outlier_dependencerho=+0.393; dropping Wyoming gives rho=+0.479
- wyoming_double_extremeWyoming ranks 1 of 51 on application growth and 1 of 51 on slowest real GDP growth; the headline asserts both
- same_windowreal GDP 2019 to 2025; business applications measured against the same 2019 base in the formation dataset
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts (SAGDP9), with U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics. Retrieved August 24, 2026. Analysis by DFX Intelligence.
Observatory data may be reused with attribution to DFX Intelligence and a link to this page. Underlying government data is in the public domain. Our editorial standards and corrections policy explain how findings are checked and how errors are fixed.