Biden Administration Sees Record Number of New Business Applications

iluvatar5150 said:

New Small Business Applications Soar to Over 17 Million Under Biden-Harris Administration | U.S. Small Business Administration

WASHINGTON – Today, Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, head of the U.S.

www.sba.gov

https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/pdf/bfs_current.pdf

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I like small businesses, much better than large companies, though the prices can be high at times.

Here is a breakdown of which sectors have boomed from 2019-2023.

Source: Business Applications Eked Out a New Record in 2023

The number of applications certainly seemed to spike and stay high after covid settled down.

Obviously "new business application" doesn't equal approval, nor to does it mean it'll ultimately a business that's still "in business" 6 months later.

But, if we assume the approval rates and 6+ month viability rates were the same as they were before... (according to the US Chamber of Commerce, roughly 9% of business applications result in an approval and a business that's still operational 6 months later). And then there's a subset of that which result in "employer businesses" (meaning a business that actually employs other people and aren't just a one-person online operation).

For instance, there's a difference between a restaurant being opened (that employs servers, cooks, and bartenders) and "Seashells by Sally" (one lady in her apartment trying to sell seashell crafts on her Wix site)


The high number of applications would lead me to believe that some things were either simplified during covid (and then stayed simplified afterwards, like being able to fast track certain processes online instead of manually filling about a bunch of forms), or there's some new forgiveness based programs that making people feel that the risks are somewhat mitigated if they take out a small business loan.

The speculation from the US Chamber of Commerce and Forbes is that during covid, a lot of people who were laid off took a crack at "flying solo" and tried to turn their hobbies into businesses.

ThatRobGuy said:

The speculation from the US Chamber of Commerce and Forbes is that during covid, a lot of people who were laid off took a crack at "flying solo" and tried to turn their hobbies into businesses.

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If they made that go for 2 or 3 years, that's impressive.

rambot said:

If they made that go for 2 or 3 years, that's impressive.

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If it's all different individuals doing it, and there was a 1:1 ration between application:business, that would be impressive.

But I suspect there's a portion of them who are people who either had to submit multiple applications before finally getting an approval, or people who maybe had 2 or 3 businesses that they tried (and then failed) over the 2-3 year time period.