Americans filed 5.23 million applications for new business tax IDs in the first ten months of 2026, 13.0 per cent more than in the same months of 2025, by this publication's sum of Census Bureau monthly data. The applications most likely to become employers went the other way.
Applications that named a planned date for paying wages fell 14.2 per cent over the same period, to about 359,000. By our count of the bureau's state series, they fell in every state and in the District of Columbia except one: Oklahoma.
What did the October release show?
The bureau's October report, published on 12 November 2026, put seasonally adjusted applications at 501,609, down 6.0 per cent from September. Applications with planned wages fell 4.5 per cent, to 34,131, and high-propensity applications, the bureau's wider measure of filings likely to turn into businesses with a payroll, fell 2.0 per cent, to 144,314.
The release also carried the bureau's annual update, which recomputes seasonal factors and revises earlier months. Every figure in this piece uses the revised series.
The data come from IRS Form SS-4, the request for an Employer Identification Number. A filer who plans to hire usually gives a date for the first wages. A sole proprietor opening a bank account for a side business, a landlord forming an LLC or a consultant incorporating for tax reasons does not.
How far has the hiring share fallen?
Further than the headline suggests. We summed the bureau's monthly national figures for January to October of each year since 2005.
| Year | All applications | With planned wages | Planned-wage share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 2,049,317 | 725,970 | 35.4% |
| 2019 | 2,908,374 | 400,519 | 13.8% |
| 2021 | 4,548,429 | 539,047 | 11.9% |
| 2023 | 4,580,037 | 517,152 | 11.3% |
| 2025 | 4,629,753 | 419,011 | 9.1% |
| 2026 | 5,232,255 | 359,498 | 6.9% |
The share has fallen every year in the series. This year's 6.9 per cent is half its 2019 level. In absolute numbers, planned-wage applications this year are below 2019's, even though total applications are 80 per cent higher.
That does not mean fewer businesses will hire. Many employers apply for a tax ID long before they hire and leave the wage line blank. But the measure has been a reasonably steady guide to employer formation for two decades, and it is now moving opposite to the total.
Which states held up?
We compared each state's January-to-October total with the same months of 2025, using the bureau's separately adjusted state series.
| State | All applications, 2026 | Change | Planned wages, 2025 | Planned wages, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma | 61,009 | +31.3% | 4,700 | 5,417 | +15.3% |
| North Dakota | 8,641 | +17.2% | 1,037 | 993 | -4.2% |
| Kansas | 36,271 | +18.6% | 3,350 | 3,150 | -6.0% |
| California | 528,802 | +16.8% | 49,594 | 44,747 | -9.8% |
| Texas | 480,695 | +8.4% | 44,111 | 37,324 | -15.4% |
| New York | 275,611 | +11.3% | 19,655 | 16,525 | -15.9% |
| Florida | 607,697 | +13.6% | 35,625 | 28,990 | -18.6% |
| Georgia | 235,989 | +13.9% | 17,872 | 13,925 | -22.1% |
| Minnesota | 67,402 | +11.0% | 6,491 | 4,968 | -23.5% |
| Hawaii | 15,109 | -7.1% | 1,502 | 1,109 | -26.2% |
| District of Columbia | 13,163 | +6.7% | 1,253 | 916 | -26.9% |
| United States | 5,232,255 | +13.0% | 419,011 | 359,498 | -14.2% |
Oklahoma is the outlier on both counts: its total rose 31.3 per cent, one of the largest gains, and its planned-wage applications rose 15.3 per cent. The census data do not say why. The state's oil and gas economy is one candidate, since West Texas crude averaged $102 a barrel in October against $58 last December, but we have not tested that, the bureau does not publish state applications by industry, and oil producers' national payrolls have shrunk this year despite the price.
Florida, which files more applications than any other state, shows the national pattern at its sharpest. Its total rose 13.6 per cent and its planned-wage filings fell 18.6 per cent; fewer than one in 20 Florida applications this year named a wage date. Only Washington and Hawaii filed fewer applications in total than in 2025.
Does this square with the jobs data?
Partly. Payroll growth has held up: employers added 165,000 jobs in October, and outside health care they have added 366,000 in a year, the most since January 2025. New firms are a small part of that. Census business formation projections, which model how many of today's applications will become employers, fell 1.8 per cent in October to 27,867 within four quarters, the release said.
The more direct reading is that the rise in applications is being driven by filers who do not intend to put anyone on a payroll, a decline that runs through the whole series and has quickened in the past two years. That is our reading of the series, not the bureau's.
What to watch
The November report is due on 11 December 2026. Applications usually rise in December and January as people register businesses for the new tax year, so the next useful test is whether the planned-wage count stops falling, not whether the total rises. If Oklahoma's gain is about oil, it should show up in the state's planned-wage filings tracking crude through the winter.
The October 2026 national and regional figures, the annual revision and the next release date are from the Census Bureau's Business Formation Statistics release CB26-184, published on 12 November 2026. The state and national monthly series (total, high-propensity and planned-wage applications, seasonally adjusted, after the annual revision) were retrieved through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED database on 13 November 2026. Monthly average West Texas Intermediate prices are EIA data via FRED (MCOILWTICO). Year-to-date totals, percentage changes, shares and the state count are this publication's arithmetic from those monthly series; state series are adjusted separately and need not sum to the national figure. The analysis is our own.
Topics businesssmall businessCensus BureauhiringOklahomaFloridaTexaseconomic data
