Though the pandemic led to the closures of many businesses, especially the small ones, Dallas has seen a growth in new business applications. Our city ranks 20th of 55 ranked large metro areas in the country.
The percentages come from data collected from 2019 through 2020. Within that time, there was a 29.1% increase in new business applications, according to Self Financial. For a better idea of what that means, there were 98,490 applications in 2019 and 127,143 applications in 2020.
Of those applications, about a third have a likelihood of turning into a business with payroll. In other words, those are called high-propensity applications. The chart below shows the growth in applications from 2005 until 2020.
The retail industry saw the most applications with transportation coming in second. However, both industries already had a high number of applications coming in from small businesses.
Texas ranks 15th out of the 50 states with 80,510 more applications in 2020 than 2019. Other large areas listed in Texas include Houston, no. 8, San Antonio, no. 35 and Austin, no. 45.