{"id":342339,"date":"2026-07-16T16:29:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/342339\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:29:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:29:42","slug":"jacksonville-tampa-orlando-ranked-in-top-10-for-small-businesses-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/342339\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando ranked in top 10 for small businesses in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Three Florida cities are ranked in the top 10 across America for their ability to develop and foster a healthy small-business environment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The financial technology firm <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nav.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Nav<\/a> recently conducted an analysis to find the cities that most encourage <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nav.com\/blog\/where-small-businesses-are-thriving-2026\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\">small-business growth<\/a> in the U.S. Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando are standout cities, per the report.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nav analysts developed a scoring system for small-business development using factors such as hiring growth, layoffs and pay growth over a two-year period from November 2023 to October 2025.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jacksonville came in third among U.S. cities for small-business development, with a score of 79.87. That puts Jacksonville behind only St. Louis, which topped the list with a score 96.43, and Philadelphia at No. 2, with a score of 84.89<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWhen analyzing hiring data between November 2023 and October 2025, we found that Jacksonville saw its greatest increase in small business hiring in July 2025 with a net hiring percentage of 5.1%,\u201d the Nav analysis concluded.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hklaw.com\/en\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-653648\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Influence_FGAT_Banner_728x90.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tampa ranked sixth with a small-business score of 75.95. That was immediately followed by Orlando at No. 7, with a score of 75.80.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miami also made the top 25, with a score of 66.48. That put Miami at No. 22. No other Florida city placed in the top 50.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Jacksonville also ranked 13th in the country for business pay growth. Jacksonville posted a 6.81% small-business pay growth over the two-year period, which doubled the national average, according to Nav analysts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Orlando also scored well in that area, with a 9.11% growth in small-business pay growth. That nearly tripled the national average, placing the Central Florida metro area at No. 7 in the nation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The study found small businesses in general showed a slight decline in hiring across the nation in the study period, with a dip of 0.03% in net hiring.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/keithgross.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external noreferrer nofollow\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-779410 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/728x90-2-scaled-e1770825250237.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, those working at small businesses get paid fairly well. The Nav study found the hourly pay rate for small business employees across the country was $34.31 per hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Florida cities are ranked in the top 10 across America for their ability to develop and foster&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[147,140509,140510,116,966,123,136722,139,140511,140512,140513,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-342339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-central-florida","tag-hiring-growth","tag-hourly","tag-jacksonville","tag-layoffs","tag-miami","tag-nav","tag-orlando","tag-pay-growth","tag-pay-rate","tag-small-business-growth","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}