Top growing small businesses in Iowa
Which small-business types are adding jobs fastest in Iowa right now, ranked from official BLS employment data. Free, updated every quarter, with a JSON API.
Ranking · Iowa · 2026 Q1
Ranked by the change in jobs compared with the same quarter one year earlier. Rows marked n/a are suppressed by BLS for confidentiality.
| # | Business type | Jobs YoY | Locations YoY | Locations | Jobs | Avg weekly wage | Startup range | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Food trucks & mobile food NAICS 722330 | +24.6% | +9.4% | 93 | 309 | $273 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 2 | Coffee shops & cafés NAICS 722515 | +7.2% | +5.3% | 853 | 9,372 | $313 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 3 | Landscaping services NAICS 561730 | +5.0% | +0.3% | 1,225 | 6,186 | $758 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 4 | Pet care & grooming NAICS 812910 | +0.5% | +2.4% | 297 | 2,392 | $445 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 5 | Gyms & fitness studios NAICS 713940 | -0.6% | +0.8% | 382 | 5,400 | $283 | $30,000–$200,000 | Analyze → |
| 6 | Child day care NAICS 624410 | -1.0% | -0.7% | 805 | 13,022 | $443 | $30,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 7 | Hair & beauty salons NAICS 812112 | -1.1% | -2.9% | 666 | 3,070 | $661 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 8 | Full-service restaurants NAICS 722511 | -1.6% | -1.2% | 2,266 | 42,131 | $432 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 9 | Quick-service restaurants NAICS 722513 | -1.6% | +0.1% | 2,171 | 40,107 | $372 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 10 | Cleaning & janitorial NAICS 561720 | -2.4% | -3.6% | 733 | 10,160 | $607 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 11 | Auto repair shops NAICS 811111 | -3.2% | +0.4% | 1,057 | 5,143 | $1,091 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 12 | Bars & taverns NAICS 722410 | -3.7% | -3.9% | 811 | 5,876 | $291 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 13 | Nail salons NAICS 812113 | -8.1% | 0.0% | 126 | 406 | $591 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 14 | Dry cleaning & laundry NAICS 812320 | -11.3% | -13.1% | 53 | 352 | $557 | $25,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
Every state
Growth is local. The same business type can be booming in one state and shrinking in the next.
Methodology
- Source. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), private-sector rows, 6-digit NAICS. QCEW is a near-complete count from unemployment-insurance filings, not a survey.
- Period. 2026 Q1, the latest quarter BLS has published. Each figure is compared with the same quarter a year earlier, using BLS's own over-the-year change fields.
- Ranking. By year-over-year change in month-three employment. Ties and suppressed values sort to the bottom.
- Business types. 14 consumer-facing industries that first-time entrepreneurs commonly open. The set is fixed so rankings are comparable across states.
- Startup range. Neur's planning range for the industry category, the same figures used by the Financial pillar of a Neur report. See the methodology.
- Refresh. Data is re-fetched from BLS daily and changes when a new quarter is released (about five months after the quarter ends).
- Caveats. Growth in jobs is not the same as room for a new entrant; a fast-growing type can also be getting crowded. Use a Neur report to check competition and demographics for a specific city.
Free JSON API
The full dataset is available as JSON with CORS enabled. No key required. Please cache responses for at least an hour.
| Endpoint | Returns |
|---|---|
GET /api/data/top-businesses | National ranking plus all 50 states |
GET /api/data/top-businesses?state=texas | One state (slug is the lowercase state name, hyphenated) |
Fields per row: naics, label, establishments, employment, avgWeeklyWage, employmentChangePct, establishmentsChangePct, wageChangePct, startupCost. Top level: period, source, generatedAt.
Using this data
You may reproduce these figures with attribution. Please link to this page as the source: https://www.neur.co/data/top-businesses/iowa. Screenshots of the table are welcome; a link back is what lets us keep the feed free.