Small business contract spending is down across the board

Join me at 1 p.m. ET for a discussion with Aditi Dussault about GovCon developments

I’m going live on YouTube with Aditi Dussault in about an hour for a wide-ranging discussion about GovCon insights and regulatory developments. We start at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Here is the link:

https://youtube.com/live/mvvDlpfCr7U?feature=share

One of the items I’m sure we’ll be discussing is how recent initiatives—like contract consolidation and the FAR overhaul—are affecting government-contract spending with small businesses. I just checked today, and the spending with small businesses is down across the board, as compared to this time in 2024:

That drop from 24.9% at this point in 2024 to 23.6% today to small businesses translates in dollar terms to $5.3 billion. In other words, if the Federal government spent at the same rate with small businesses this year as it did last year, small businesses would have received $5.3 billion more.

And there is nowhere to hide from this decrease. Spending also is down among small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, HUBZone businesses, and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. The dollar gap for service-disabled veteran-owned firms is $1.75 billion.

If overall spending continues at this same rate, those dollar gaps will only increase. The government has only spent about 60% of what it is expected to spend on contracts for this fiscal year.

This gives us a lot to talk about at 1 p.m. ET. Please join us.

Sam Le is a Virginia- and D.C.-licensed attorney. His website is www.samlelaw.com.