The decrease in new entrepreneurs who began their business out of choice during 2020, known as the opportunity share, is the largest drop throughout the past 25 years, according to the Kauffman report. Between 2019 and 2020, the decline was 17.1 percentage points, while the decrease between 2008 and 2009 during the Great Recession was 6.9 percentage points.
Startup early job creation remained essentially unchanged from the previous year (5 jobs per 1,000 people) and its longer-term trends are worrisome, the report says, finding that levels remain substantially lower in recent years than in years prior to the Great Recession, peaking in 1997 at 7.9.
The entire Kauffman Foundation report, National Report on Early Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2020, may be accessed here.