Business owners’ outlook on the environment for starting and running a company has soured even as ownership continues to correlate with stronger financial and personal wellbeing, according to the third installment of Gallup’s Pathways to Wealth study, released with support from JPMorganChase and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
In fall 2025, just 17% of business owners said it was a better time to start or run a business than a year earlier, while 44% said conditions had worsened, according to the report, titled “The Ownership Advantage: How Business Ownership Connects to Wealth in the Modern World of Work.”
Owners most commonly cited general U.S. economic conditions, at 55%, state taxes and regulations, at 48%, and recent changes to federal tariffs on imports, at 46%, as sources of difficulty for their businesses, though the report noted that some owners viewed those same factors as opportunities rather than obstacles.
Artificial intelligence emerged as a more clearly positive factor for those using it. While most respondents reported no recent workplace AI use, those who did were more likely to report time savings and positive effects than negative ones. Thirty-seven percent of all respondents said they had observed AI-driven improvements to their products or services, the most commonly cited impact, and business owners of any type were more likely than employee-only workers to describe AI as “highly useful.” Reports of AI-related layoffs were limited among owner-employers, at 4%, while 10% said AI had contributed to additional hiring, suggesting the technology is shaping workforce growth more through hiring decisions than immediate job cuts, according to the report.
Despite the more pessimistic outlook, business owners who employ others continued to report the strongest outcomes among working adults. Sixty-eight percent of owner-employers were classified as “thriving,” compared with 56% of non-employer owners and 49% of employee-only workers. Owner-employers reported a median household income of $155,000, compared with $100,000 for non-employer owners and $105,000 for employees, and 55% said they were living comfortably on their present income, compared with 42% of non-employer owners and 32% of employee-only workers. Self-employed workers reported lower income and financial comfort overall.
Business owners viewed their local business environments considerably more favorably than the national picture. Overall, 47% said they were highly satisfied with their local area as a place to run a business, while just 12% expressed dissatisfaction, with owner-employers the most likely to report high satisfaction — a pattern consistent with their stronger financial performance, according to the report.
Employer ownership remained both rare and difficult to sustain. Just 2% of U.S. workers are owner-employers, and among those who owned a business without employees in 2023, only 5% had begun employing others by 2025. Maintaining employer status also proved challenging: among owner-employers in 2023, 58% retained that status by 2025, while 42% transitioned to other arrangements, though most who exited employer status continued to own a business in some form, with just 3% moving fully into employee-only work. Business scale was closely linked to whether employer status held: among businesses that remained owner-employers from 2024 to 2025, median revenue was $500,000, compared with $35,000 among those that lost employer status over that period.
The findings are based on Gallup’s Year 3 Pathways to Wealth survey, conducted Sept. 26 to Nov. 3, 2025, among 5,926 U.S. working adults, including an oversample of 3,501 business owners, 1,345 of whom employ at least one other worker. The study includes a longitudinal component, with many respondents participating in multiple waves since 2023 alongside newly recruited participants in 2025. Data were weighted to be representative of the U.S. employed adult population using benchmarks from the American Community Survey and the Annual Business Survey.