Americans are starting businesses at a record pace

Americans filed 578,926 new business applications in July, the most in the 22 years the Census Bureau has tracked the series. The previous record was July 2020 (546,719), the peak of the pandemic startup wave; the 2019 average was 293K a month, roughly half the current pace.

One caveat: an application is an EIN filing rather than an operating company, and only a fraction become employer businesses. But the level shift is real and durable. The post-2020 pace never returned to the pre-pandemic trend, and it is now setting records without a lockdown behind it.