5th District Footprint
November 2016

This issue of 5th District Footprint examines the percentage change in the number and total dollar value of small business loans originated in Fifth District counties in the years following the Great Recession — from 2010 to 2015 — by the location of the recipient small businesses.
Small Business Lending in the Fifth District
This statistic uses the U.S. Small Business Administration definition of small business, which includes all firms with fewer than 500 employees. Business Employment Dynamics Table D: Average percentage share of gross job gains and gross job losses by firm size, third quarter 1992-fourth quarter 2015, seasonally adjusted, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015.
Some research further suggests that small business job creation is concentrated among new and entering firms. E.g. Haltiwanger et al. “Who Creates Jobs? Small Versus Large Versus Young,” 2013.
“2015 Small Business Credit Survey: Report on Employer Firms,” Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Richmond and St. Louis, March 2016.
Additional CRA performance standards vary by the size of the financial institution, but generally include percentage of lending activity in the designated CRA assessment area, record of lending to populations with varied income levels and geographic distribution of lending activity. For more information, see “A Banker’s Quick Reference Guide to CRA” from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
The FFIEC defines small business loans as those with an original amount of $1 million or less that were reported by the financial institutions as either "loans secured by nonfarm or nonresidential real estate" or "commercial and industrial loans." The number of financial institutions reporting to the FFIEC may vary from 2010 to 2015.
The average amount of small business loans is found by dividing the total dollar value by the number of small business loans in the given county for the given year.