The small business contracting goals, how the SBA scorecard tracks them, and how to turn the data into set-aside strategy.
Last reviewed on June 5, 2026 by the Government.biz editorial team. Goal percentages are statutory baselines; confirm current performance in the latest SBA scorecard.
Federal set-aside policy starts with a single number written into law: at least 23% of all federal prime contract dollars should go to small businesses each fiscal year. Sitting underneath that headline target are four socioeconomic subgoals, each expressed as a percentage of total prime contract dollars rather than a percentage of small business dollars. The statutory subgoals are 5% to small disadvantaged businesses (SDB), 5% to women-owned small businesses (WOSB), 3% to HUBZone firms, and 3% to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSB). The Small Business Administration negotiates an individual goal with each major buying agency, and those agency-level goals are calibrated so that, in aggregate, they ladder up to the governmentwide targets.
A few nuances matter when you read these numbers. The 5% SDB figure is a statutory floor, not a ceiling. In recent years, administration procurement policy has pushed to raise the share of federal contracting going to small disadvantaged businesses toward 15%, well above the legal minimum. Treat that 15% as a policy aspiration that can shift with each administration and each budget cycle rather than as a fixed rule; the statutory floor remains 5%, and what agencies actually chase in a given year may be higher. Whenever an exact percentage drives a decision, verify it against the current-year guidance.
Performance against these goals has been strong at the top line. The government has exceeded the 23% small business prime goal for many consecutive years, with recent small-business prime dollars running well over $150 billion annually. The picture is more uneven once you look at the subgoals. The SDVOSB and SDB categories have generally been met or exceeded, while HUBZone and, in some years, WOSB are missed more often. That gap between the easily met goals and the chronically missed ones is exactly where set-aside opportunity tends to concentrate, which is why the subgoal-by-subgoal detail is worth more than the headline number.
Each year the SBA publishes the Small Business Procurement Scorecard, an annual report card that grades every major federal agency, and the government as a whole, on how well it met its small business and socioeconomic contracting goals. Agencies receive a letter grade on an A+ to F scale, derived from a weighted blend of how they performed against the prime goal, each subgoal, and subcontracting targets. The scorecard is published free on the SBA website, and the underlying numbers come from the Small Business Goaling Report, the official dataset of obligations attributed to each socioeconomic category.
An agency grade is a useful shorthand, but the letter alone hides the detail you need. A department can earn an A while still falling short on a single subgoal, because the strong categories pull up the average. For a contractor, the value is in opening the scorecard and reading the category-level lines: which agency met HUBZone, which missed WOSB, and by how many dollars. A near-miss on a subgoal at a large buying agency is a signal that contracting officers there will be under internal pressure to award more of that specific set-aside in the coming year.
Three public sources cover almost everything you need. The SBA scorecard gives you the graded summary and the goal-versus-achievement comparison per agency. The Small Business Goaling Report is the raw source behind the scorecard and lets you see the dollar totals by category. And USAspending.gov exposes the underlying contract actions, so you can filter by agency, by NAICS code, by set-aside type, and by socioeconomic flag to see who actually won the work.
The most useful move is to cross-reference them. Start in the scorecard to find an agency-and-category pair where the goal was missed, then pivot into USAspending or the goaling report to quantify the shortfall in dollars and to see which firms are currently capturing that spend. Breaking the data down both by agency and by socioeconomic category at the same time is what turns a static statistic into a target list. Pair this with our agency forecasts to line up where future demand is heading, not just where past dollars went.
The strategy follows directly from the structure of the goals. First, find the agencies and categories where a subgoal is being missed. A missed subgoal is not a failure you can ignore; it is leverage. Agencies that fall short have a documented gap, and contracting officers face real pressure to close it by steering more requirements into that set-aside the following year. Second, match those gaps to a certification you already hold or could realistically obtain. Third, target the specific NAICS codes where that agency buys, so your capability statement and registrations point at the work that actually flows through the under-met category.
This is why HUBZone is worth a hard look for firms that can meet its location and employment rules: it is the category most reliably missed governmentwide, which means demand for qualified HUBZone vendors frequently outruns supply. Use our competitor analysis guidance to confirm how crowded a given category already is before you commit to chasing it.
A set-aside statistic is only actionable if you can compete inside the set-aside it describes, which comes down to certification. Start with the overview of federal certifications to see the full menu, then drill into the program that matches your gap analysis. The major doors are the 8(a) Business Development program for socially and economically disadvantaged firms, the HUBZone program for businesses in historically underutilized zones, the SDVOSB and VOSB programs for veteran-owned firms, and the WOSB and EDWOSB certifications for women-owned businesses.
An important practical point: most firms qualify for more than one. An 8(a)-eligible company is often also a small disadvantaged business and may be woman-owned or located in a HUBZone. Holding several certifications lets you respond to whichever set-aside an agency is using to close its weakest subgoal, which multiplies the number of opportunities the data points you toward.
Treat every percentage on this page as a baseline, not a live figure. The statutory floors are stable, but the goals agencies actually pursue, the policy targets layered on top of them, and even the definitions of some categories change with new administrations, regulations, and SBA rulemaking. Achievement numbers shift every fiscal year as the goaling report is finalized. Before you rely on any specific number for a bid or business plan, verify it against the latest published SBA scorecard and the current-year goaling data rather than trusting a figure you saw last year.
The statutory governmentwide goals are at least 23% of prime contract dollars to small businesses, with subgoals of 5% to small disadvantaged businesses, 5% to women-owned small businesses, 3% to HUBZone firms, and 3% to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. Agencies negotiate individual goals that ladder up to these.
The SBA Small Business Procurement Scorecard is an annual report card grading each major federal agency, and the government overall, on how well it met its small business and socioeconomic contracting goals. It is based on the Small Business Goaling Report and is published free on the SBA website.
It depends on your certifications and NAICS codes and on which agencies are missing which goals. Agencies that fall short of a subgoal (for example HUBZone, which is often under-achieved) create pressure to award more of that set-aside, so under-met categories can hold the best openings for a certified firm.
Source: SBA Small Business Procurement Scorecard. General information, not legal advice.