Top growing small businesses in Wisconsin
Which small-business types are adding jobs fastest in Wisconsin right now, ranked from official BLS employment data. Free, updated every quarter, with a JSON API.
Ranking · Wisconsin · 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 | +31.5% | +14.8% | 171 | 355 | $439 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 2 | Coffee shops & cafés NAICS 722515 | +9.0% | +8.7% | 1,374 | 15,271 | $356 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 3 | Landscaping services NAICS 561730 | +5.8% | +4.6% | 2,664 | 14,161 | $831 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 4 | Pet care & grooming NAICS 812910 | +4.9% | +5.6% | 600 | 5,389 | $471 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 5 | Gyms & fitness studios NAICS 713940 | +4.6% | +2.8% | 821 | 12,680 | $314 | $30,000–$200,000 | Analyze → |
| 6 | Nail salons NAICS 812113 | +3.8% | +7.0% | 550 | 2,441 | $568 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 7 | Cleaning & janitorial NAICS 561720 | +0.1% | +5.0% | 1,555 | 22,222 | $540 | $10,000–$50,000 | Analyze → |
| 8 | Child day care NAICS 624410 | -0.1% | +1.1% | 1,531 | 19,020 | $588 | $30,000–$150,000 | Analyze → |
| 9 | Bars & taverns NAICS 722410 | -0.5% | -0.9% | 2,850 | 21,049 | $332 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 10 | Auto repair shops NAICS 811111 | -0.6% | +2.0% | 1,915 | 9,335 | $1,122 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 11 | Quick-service restaurants NAICS 722513 | -1.0% | +1.4% | 3,791 | 68,704 | $390 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 12 | Full-service restaurants NAICS 722511 | -1.4% | +1.5% | 4,731 | 85,298 | $429 | $50,000–$300,000 | Analyze → |
| 13 | Hair & beauty salons NAICS 812112 | -1.4% | +2.6% | 1,475 | 7,622 | $599 | $20,000–$100,000 | Analyze → |
| 14 | Dry cleaning & laundry NAICS 812320 | -12.8% | -0.9% | 106 | 680 | $594 | $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/wisconsin. Screenshots of the table are welcome; a link back is what lets us keep the feed free.