Jamie Dimon has been warning since March that 'the American Dream is alive, but it’s slipping out of reach for too many people—and for future generations.' JPMorgan Chase is now attaching a specific business risk to that warning.
A new report set for release Monday, 'Powering 10 Million Small Businesses,' says 70% of the 1,000 business owners it surveyed are in the early stages of succession planning, but only 8% say they have reached an advanced stage. The bank says roughly 12 million businesses, representing nearly $10 trillion in assets, are expected to change hands over the next decade.
That transition is especially concentrated in industries JPMorgan considers critical to national security, where more than half of firms have an owner age 55 or older. The bank describes the moment as part of a broader 'Great Wealth Transfer' or 'Silver Tsunami,' but says the reality looks more like a reluctant exit.
The problem is not limited to small businesses. A recent analysis of S&P 500 companies found that at more than one-third of firms sampled, the CEO and CFO were both in the retirement window at the same time, with no clear succession plan disclosed. The dysfunction, in JPMorgan's telling, runs from Main Street to the C-suite.
Other data point in the same direction. McKinsey's Institute for Economic Mobility estimated in February that 6% to 13% of small-business closures over the coming decade could be avoided if owners planned better. A 2025 Gallup survey found 27% of employer firms with owners 55 or older are either unsure of their long-term plan or intend to close the business outright rather than sell or transfer it. U.S. Bank's 2025 small-business survey found that a majority of owners said they lack a formal plan for how succession will happen and describe the process as overwhelming.
JPMorgan also highlights the stakes for communities built around ownership. Nicole Williams said she grew up hearing family stories about San Francisco's Fillmore district, once known as the 'Harlem of the West.' When her boutique Belle Noire grew, she recruited five other Black women entrepreneurs to open the Cowrie Collective, a shared retail space inside San Francisco's Palace Hotel.
Williams said, 'We didn't open Cowrie Collective to sell more products. We opened it to make downtown feel connected again—six businesses, one vision, and a place where every purchase carries meaning.'
The bank says the project got support through SF New Deal's 'Vacant to Vibrant' program, a public-private partnership backed by JPMorgan and the City of San Francisco, which converted an empty downtown storefront into the opening and handled permitting, accessibility compliance, and the move from pop-up to long-term lease.
The larger lesson is plain enough. When ownership does not pass cleanly from one generation to the next, capital gets trapped, jobs are put at risk, and local enterprise loses momentum. Succession is not a sentimental issue; it is a market test of whether the American Dream can still be handed off instead of quietly wound down.
Capital rewards clear rules, and business continuity is one of them. If owners spend decades building value, the free enterprise system depends on a path to transfer it without letting bureaucracy, hesitation, or bad planning destroy it on the way out.