Business Owners and the Self-Employed: Thirty-Three Million (and Counting!)

Christopher Goetz, Henry Hyatt, Zachary Kroff, Kristin Sandusky and Martha Stinson

No 34252, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are known to be key drivers of economic growth, and the rise of online platforms and the broader "gig economy" has led self-employment to surge in recent decades. Yet the young and small businesses associated with this activity are often absent from economic data. In this paper, we explore a novel longitudinal dataset that covers the owners of tens of millions of the smallest businesses: those without employees. We produce three new sets of statistics on the rapidly growing set of nonemployer businesses. First, we measure transitions between self-employment and wage and salary jobs. Second, we describe nonemployer business entry and exit, as well as transitions between legal form (e.g., sole proprietorship to S corporation). Finally, we link owners to their nonemployer businesses and examine the dynamics of business ownership.

JEL-codes: L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
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