To the list of unpredictable outcomes of the pandemic and related policy-based disruptions of American life, add a surge in business startups. After years of declining entrepreneurship, a previously risk-averse population appears to have peered open-eyed at a society gone off the rails despite its hopes and committed to embracing the resulting opportunities.
"Despite a health catastrophe and one of the worst economic downturns in modern history, startup business activity grew in the United States last year—business startups grew from 3.5 million in 2019 to 4.4 million in 2020, a 24 percent increase," the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) noted earlier this year.
The surge has continued since then. According to the Census Bureau, startups for November 2021 were up 8.9 percent over November 2020, and business launches for that month were already up 35 percent from the previous year. That is a lot of entrepreneurial activity for a country in which, not too long ago, economists worried about Americans' loss of interest in working for themselves.
