The October Business Formation Statistics were released by the U.S. Census last week.
And as the Census chart below shows (click to enlarge), there were 432,934 new business tax I.D. applications in October.
Business applications took off in Q3 of 2020, and in 2022 they've run at a rate about 43% higher than pre-pandemic.
Retail trade, which includes ecommerce firms, and professional services, continue to be the top two applications categories.
Also continuing is the shift to solopreneur business applications instead of employer business applications.
We're going repeat ourselves and point out that new business applications ARE NOT the same as new business startups.
Research by the U.S. Census and similar research by our firm indicates that about 18% - 22% of applications result in new businesses. So if you read that 432,000 small businesses were started in October, it's not correct.
But by historical standards, 20% of 423,000 is still a lot of new businesses.
