Which State Has the Lowest New Business Survival Rate in US (by far)?

It's no secret the difficulty in WA state of opening a business has increased over the last few years, and now government figures back it up.

 New data shows WA state has the lowest success rate

  Ringy, a company specializes in CRM, or Customer Relationship Management for businesses, recently compiled a study using Federal data about business survival rates in all 50 states.

Bureau of Labor Statistical Data was analyzed from 2019 through 2024. The specific information came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Business Employment Dynamics dataset.

It tracked five-year survival rates in every state and Washington D.C.  While a lot of factors factor into survival rates, most business experts agree if an operation makes it to at least five years, their failure rate drops dramatically.

5 years is considered a 'proving' ground.   The study shows the most successful state with new business survival (especially small businesses) is West Virginia. 57.6 percent of their new businesses made to at least five years.  Coming in 2nd through 5th were Connecticut, Alaska, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

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The bottom five included, surprisingly, Idaho, Kansas, Washington D.C., Missouri, and the worst in the US was Washington. 

Of the 22.326 new businesses that were opened in 2019, only 9,183 were still around in 2024.  Now, a large number of them include tech and digital entities that are often absorbed by others, or disband. But WA state's survival rate is only 41.1 percent.

Oregon landed at 27th.  According  to the WA Policy Center, there are a number of reasons why WA's rate is so low:

"...high taxes, complex regulations, rising operational costs (like workers' comp), and general economic pressures, leading to high failure rates."

With looming legislation in January that seeks to increase payroll taxes, Business and Occupation taxes, and other costs, it does not appear that survival rate is going to improve anytime soon.