Federal Solicitations Set Aside for Small Businesses (%)

## What this measures

The percentage of each month's solicitations carrying a set-aside: total or partial small business, 8(a), HUBZone, service-disabled veteran-owned, women-owned and the other SBA programs.

## Why it matters

Set-asides decide who can compete. The share moves with agency small-business goals and policy, and with the mix of what is being bought.

## How to read it

Higher means more of the month's bids are reserved for small businesses. The series starts in January 2020 at 46.1%. The latest month, September 2026, is 55.2%. The high is 60.3% (August 2022) and the low 41.1% (October 2021).

## What it does not say

Not every federal purchase is posted: purchases under $25,000, orders under existing contracts and some classified or urgent buys are not. Solicitations rarely carry a dollar value, so these series count notices, not dollars. One requirement can be posted as several notices.

## How it's built

Each notice is counted once, by its posted date and its base type, the type it was first posted as (a solicitation later turned into an award notice still counts as a solicitation). Solicitations = solicitations and combined synopsis/solicitations. History from January 2020: SAM.gov replaced FBO.gov as the system of record in November 2019, and about half the notices carried over from FBO have no department. From the last 25 months Palanor keeps one slim row per notice and recomputes the closed months on every run; a month is published three days after it ends. Set aside = any set-aside code other than none.

## Source

SAM.gov Contract Opportunities, U.S. General Services Administration: the public data extracts on sam.gov/data-services (ContractOpportunitiesFullCSV.csv, every active notice, daily; the Archived Data files FY2018 on). Public domain. Refreshed daily by /api/cron/sam-opportunities-sync.