Towards 1 million small businesses by 2030

NSW is the small business powerhouse of Australia with 34% of small businesses calling NSW home.ⁱ

For more than a decade, the NSW Government has worked hard to ensure small business can start, grow and thrive in a low tax, low regulation environment, where barriers are reduced, opportunities are created and different types of support are available if and when required.

By 2030, NSW will continue to be powered by small businesses that provide products and services to their local community, across NSW, Australia and overseas. Within the next seven years, our State will be the home of 1 million small businesses, an increase of 20% from today and 50% since 2013. These small businesses will strengthen NSW’s economy by creating jobs, prosperity and important community services that all contribute to making NSW a great place to live.

More people are employed by small businesses in NSW than any other State in Australia. As we move forward to the end of the decade, it is estimated that the growth of this  sector will mean almost 2.2 million people will work in a small business across NSW.

The next seven years will see more changes in the small business landscape, including more digital services and transactions, more automation, a bigger shift to the circular economy and net zero emissions, and adaptation to climate change. There will also, rightly, be a stronger focus on ensuring everyone in our community has more opportunity to start and grow a business. 

This strategy commits the NSW Government to taking actions that set up and support small businesses through these changing patterns:

• Helping build resilient businesses that can adapt in response to economic pressures from changing interest rates, supply chain disruptions and climate change, to making it easier to supply products and services to government. While future challenges are inevitable, we will help strengthen small businesses to help manage them and continue to thrive.
• Supporting a shift to digital tools, to reach more customers than ever before, simplify government services and protect businesses from cyber threats. This will ensure small business has the confidence and skills to reach a wider  range of customers, including nationally and overseas.
• Ensuring small businesses throughout our State are supported, recognising those outside metropolitan centres can face additional challenges in accessing information, obtaining insurance, and, for businesses in border areas, complying with multiple regulatory regimes.
• Building on existing work to tackle barriers in starting a small business experienced by some women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and with disabilities.

This Strategy looks to the future and recognises both the challenges and opportunities for small businesses. The next Small Business Strategy we release, for 2026-30, will go further, responding to future changes in the market and workforce, digital services and climate change. The NSW Government will continue to support small business to thrive and make our State the home of 1 million small businesses by 2030.