According to the U.S. Census, the number of nonemployer businesses in 2017 increased to 25,701,671, up 3.6% from 2016.
Nonemployers are businesses that have an owner, but don't have paid traditional full or part-time employees (W2 employees). The data comes from tax records.
As the chart below shows (click to enlarge), the number of nonemployers has been growing around 2.45% per year since 2010.
That may not sound like a lot of growth, but it's about 3 times the growth rate for overall employment.
We've long tracked the nonemployer business statistics.
Nonemployer data gets less attention than other government data on self-employment.
This is because the dataset is messy and includes a hodge podge of business entities - passive businesses, firms no longer in business, LLCs owned by major corporations, etc. - that aren't active solopreneur businesses.
But we find this data a useful general indicator of U.S. self-employment.
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