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Baby boomers own roughly 2.3 million privately held U.S. businesses with employees, a group that employs about 24.7 million workers, or one in six people on a U.S. payroll. Management consultant Nicholas Mukhtar, whose Fort Lauderdale firm Tera Strategies advises family offices and business owners across the country, says few of those companies have settled who runs things once the current owner steps back.
Roughly 4.1 million Americans turned 65 in 2024 alone, about 11,200 people a day, and 2027 stands out as the peak year for business ownership transitions tied to that wave, per The American Reporter.
A Gap Confirmed by National Survey Data
About 55% of small-business owners plan to close their company or have no long-term succession plan, per a 2024 Gallup poll conducted with JPMorganChase and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that surveyed 1,264 owners. Fewer than 15% of businesses end up passing to a family member, and most companies that reach the open market never close a sale.
A separate slice of owners, about 33%, told researchers they lack a plan or aren’t sure what their company’s future looks like, a category distinct from those who have already decided to close.
Mukhtar points to a pattern among owners he advises: daily operations crowd out planning for what comes after. “The ones who make mistakes are often so busy building their business, doing whatever led to their success, that they forget why they’re doing it: for their family and the next generation,” Mukhtar said.
Employee Paychecks Ride on the Outcome
Roughly 51% of the current American business market sits in boomer hands, and workers on those payrolls have a direct stake in whether a transition happens cleanly or turns into a forced sale or a shutdown. A named successor and documented operations, put in place years before a retirement date rather than negotiated in the final months, separate companies that survive a handoff from those that don’t.
Documented processes matter as much as a named heir. A buyer or successor who inherits pricing decisions, vendor relationships and client history built entirely in one person’s memory faces a business that’s harder to value and harder to run, regardless of how profitable it looked on paper the year before.
Consequences extend beyond any single owner’s retirement account. Once a company with dozens or hundreds of employees closes for lack of a plan, those jobs disappear too, a cost that rarely shows up in exit statistics but shapes local economies for years.
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