SBA Report Card Released: Annual small business spending increases again; WOSB and HUBZone programs still fall short.

SBA just released its latest small business contracting scorecard and, once again, there’s a lot for small businesses to celebrate. But, issues still remain—particularly for WOSB and HUBZone companies.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

In 2022, the federal government awarded almost $163 billion in prime contract awards to small businesses—up from $154 billion the year before. Though spending has increased, the percentage of small business awards has taken a little dip—from 27.23% of contract awards in 2021, down to 26.50% in 2022. Even with this decrease, the government still exceeded its 23% small business prime contract goal.

There’s some other good news in the latest report card:

As this information shows, both 8(a) Participants and SDVOSB entities continue to benefit from government agencies exceeding their program contracting goals.

WOSBs and HUBZone participants, however, fall short once again. Both programs fell about 0.4% shy of their respective contracting goals. And though this might not seem like the federal government is missing the goal by that much, that translates into billions of dollars in contracting opportunities that should have been—but were not—awarded to these companies.

I’ve written repeatedly on the problems caused by the government’s failure to hit these goals. And I’ve spoken to Congress about them, too. But it’s not clear the government recognizes there’s a problem. That is, even though the WOSB and HUBZone programs fell short of their goal, SBA awarded an “A” grade for the governmentwide performance.

We should all celebrate that small businesses are receiving billions of dollars worth of contracts every year. While celebrating that success, we can also recognize that more should be done to ensure the government does a better job of awarding contracts to these businesses.

Hopefully next year’s report card will give us something to really celebrate.