People quit their jobs to start their own

Future. Thanks to COVID, the 2020s is shaping up to be a decade of entrepreneurship, with a record number of company applications filed. And it may be the best time to strike out on your own — if your new hustle happens to go under, there’s a safety net of a lot of jobs desperate to be filled.

Stay-at-home economy
Maybe it’s not the “Great Resignation” as much as it is the “Great Creation.”

• Entrepreneurship has skyrocketed during COVID and has continued to do so into 2021 — 5.4 million applications to start companies have currently been filed.
  • That’s 53% more than in 2019.
• A third of those applications are expected to start companies that will hire employees — that’s right, more job creation.
• Most of the new companies are in industries such as delivery, HR consulting, and e-commerce (of course).

I’m the captain now
Why is this happening? When COVID hit, many lost their jobs, so they pivoted to entrepreneurship to pay the bills. Even though jobs have come back, people like being their own boss — a surprising revelation after the 2010s was one of the “least entrepreneurial decades in U.S. history.”

According to Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, the stay-at-home lockdown period and government stimulus checks gave people the “time and resources” to make the jump. Now that people have them set up, having their own company aligns more with how they want to live their lives.