13,597 Filings: Our First Monthly Formation Edition

This is the August 2026 edition of US Tech Automations' monthly business-formation tracker — the first dated entry in a running series, drawn from the same daily clock behind our evergreen formation report. Rather than lead with a single metro ranking, this edition opens with the question its slug asks directly: across the four cities this clock reads, where are people actually filing new businesses, and in what kind of work?

This is the first dated edition in this monthly series. There is no earlier August, July, or any other prior dated edition of this specific series to compare against, so nothing below is described as a change, a rise, or a fall relative to an earlier month.

TL;DR for This Edition

• 13,597 new business filings captured cumulatively across the 4 metros this clock tracks, from March 28, 2026 through August 6, 2026.

• 7,913 filings fall inside the trailing 90-day window ending August 6, 2026 — a separate slice from the cumulative count, not the same number restated.

• Construction is the top sector, holding a 16.1% share in both the cumulative and the 90-day breakdown.

• One metro's feed has gone quiet: New York City's latest filing on file dates to April 16, 2026, well before this edition's snapshot.

• Sector coverage sits at 62.0% of cumulative filings and 54.7% of the recent 90-day filings — the rest carry no NAICS code at all.

What Kind of Business Is Being Registered, Cumulatively

Two of the four cities this clock reads — San Francisco and Los Angeles — publish a NAICS industry code on every filing; the other two publish only a free-text activity description. The table below groups every coded filing into its 2-digit sector, using the code exactly as each record carries it.

Construction leads every sector-coded filing this edition captures, at a 16.1% cumulative share. That figure covers only the 62.0% of cumulative filings that carry a usable NAICS code in the first place — the remaining filings either lack a code or come from a city that only publishes free text, and are not folded into the percentages above.

The Same Sector Breakdown, Narrowed to the Trailing 90 Days

Construction holds the same 16.1% share in the narrower 90-day window as it does cumulatively — one of the few figures on this page that lines up across both tables. NAICS coverage runs lower in the recent window, at 54.7%, against 62.0% cumulatively — a coverage artifact, not a sign that fewer sector-coded businesses actually formed recently.

Neither sector table above is a before-and-after of the other. Each is a snapshot of what carried a usable NAICS code at the moment this edition was sealed, and a later capture of the same window could show a different coverage rate as more records pick up a code.

Where the Filings Actually Land: the Metro Ranking

Los Angeles carries just under half of everything captured across the four tracked metros, at a 48.2% share. New York City's row is the one that needs its own read: 303 cumulative filings against 0 in the trailing 90 days, and a latest filing dated April 16, 2026 — months before this edition's snapshot date. That gap reads as a dataset that has gone quiet in our collection, not as business formation stopping in New York City.

Why This Edition Doesn't Compare Itself to Anything Yet

Because this is the first dated monthly edition in the series, there is no earlier dated edition of this exact series to set a baseline against. A future edition will be able to show whether Construction holds its 16.1% share, whether Los Angeles keeps its 48.2% position, or whether New York City's feed picks back up — but none of that comparison exists in this edition, and this report does not manufacture one to fill the gap.

Only once a second dated edition exists does a month-over-month reading have any meaning, and even then this series will only ever compare a cumulative count against another cumulative count, never against a narrower recent-window figure from a different edition.

What a Second Edition Will Be Able to Show

Once this series has run for a second month, a reader will finally be able to check whether Construction holds its 16.1% share of sector-coded filings, whether Los Angeles keeps its 48.2% position in the metro ranking, or whether New York City's feed picks back up from its April 16, 2026 stall. None of those questions can be answered from a single edition alone, no matter how closely the numbers are read.

The evergreen version of this report already updates continuously against the same underlying clock, if a reader wants the current picture rather than a fixed monthly snapshot while this dated series is still building its own history. The two are built from the same feed; they answer the "as of when" question differently — one is always current, the other is frozen to a stated date and never quietly redrawn afterward.

A dated edition and an evergreen report drawn from the same clock will usually show close but not identical numbers, because the evergreen version keeps moving after a dated edition is sealed. Neither is more accurate than the other — they answer "how many filings, as of what date" differently on purpose.

Method in Plain English

The formation clock behind this edition checks four cities' own open municipal datasets daily and records each new filing it has not already seen — renewals are excluded, only new registrations count, and a registration is a piece of paper, not proof a business opened its doors or hired anyone.

Every count in this edition is a verbatim count of distinct registrations the clock actually captured; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. A city that publishes a broader slice of its own licence types will naturally show more filings here than a city publishing a narrower slice, even at equal actual formation activity — this edition measures four specific datasets, not the underlying economy of any city.

This edition re-shapes one already-sealed capture of that clock rather than collecting anything fresh. Our permits-by-metro roundup applies the same daily-clock, multi-city discipline to a different first-party dataset, if a second example is useful context.

A registration's sector code can also change between the moment a filing is first captured and the moment an edition is sealed, as cities backfill NAICS codes onto older filings — this edition freezes each filing's coverage status exactly as it stood on August 7, 2026, and a later edition reading the same window could show a higher coverage rate as more of those backfills land.

Put the Formation Data to Work

A market-entry or location-strategy lead scanning for where new competitors and potential customers are showing up cannot pull a same-format, same-window comparison like this from any single city's own portal. US Tech Automations runs the automation workflows that check four municipal systems daily and reshape the result into one dated edition every month, instead of someone manually reconciling four different exports by hand each time the question comes up. Our FDA recall edition applies the same dated-edition discipline to a different federal dataset, if a second monthly series is useful context.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the top sector in the August 2026 edition?
A: Construction, holding a 16.1% share of sector-coded filings in both the cumulative total and the trailing 90-day window — one of the few figures that lines up identically across both windows.

Q: Which metro carries the largest share of filings?
A: Los Angeles, at 6,557 cumulative filings and a 48.2% share of everything the four tracked metros captured combined.

Q: Is this edition higher or lower than a previous month?
A: There is no previous dated edition of this monthly series to compare against — this is the first one. No increase or decrease is claimed anywhere in this report.

Q: Why does New York City show 0 filings in the recent 90-day window?
A: Its latest filing on file dates to April 16, 2026, well before this edition's trailing 90-day window even begins. That reflects a dataset that has gone quiet in our collection, not business formation stopping in the city.

Q: Does a lower NAICS-coverage rate in the recent window mean fewer coded businesses formed recently?
A: No. It means a smaller share of the most recent batch of filings happened to carry a NAICS code when this edition was sealed. Coverage itself can shift edition to edition as more records get coded after the fact.

Method and Provenance

Every figure in this edition is read directly from our own sealed business-formation clock, re-shaped from an already-sealed capture dated August 7, 2026. This is a census of four municipal open-data systems — Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA; New York City, NY; and San Francisco, CA — collected between March 28, 2026 and August 6, 2026, not a census of every business formed in the United States. Every count is a verbatim count of distinct business registrations the clock actually captured; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — Business Formation series, August 2026 edition, from our own daily business-formation clock.