Census Data Highlights Surge in New Startups

Interesting data from the Census Bureau and a related white paper by Decker and Haltiwanger on entrepreneurship and new business formation since the pandemic. Two takeaways from the charts below.

First, it reminds us how much damage the Great Recession wreaked across the U.S. We still feel the political impact. It took a global pandemic to turbocharge entrepreneurship and reach levels we hadn't seen since the mid-2000s.

Second, the pandemic-era burst of business creation reminds us that we are an entrepreneurial nation. We want to start our own businesses, bring our ideas into the world, create jobs, and create economic security and wealth for our families.

That spirit can be crushed under the weight of bad government policies and economic insecurity at home. Access to health care. Living wages. Affordable child care and elder care. Non-college pathways to technical skills development.

The recent surge in business formation demonstrates our potential to adapt and thrive in the face of disruption—whether a global pandemic or the impact of AI. What policy choices could we make as a country that would give people the space to take the leap into entrepreneurship?

In the coming wave of AI-related disruption, we can enable entrepreneurship and unleash the job-creating forces behind it. We need to learn from the past to set the right policies for the future.