Who hasn’t dreamed of being their own boss?! Answering only to yourself, making your own work hours, and working on projects you actually care about is the main motivation for almost half of America’s entrepreneurs to start their businesses, while money comes next on the priority list, according to the most recent entrepreneurship statistics.
Pursuing an entrepreneurial career can allow you to realize your vision and utilize your skills and talents in a way that no traditional job can. However, the stats also show significant failure rates and a huge percentage of entrepreneurs earning up to $2,000 per month, so only a handful of people end up accepting the risk and starting a business.
Top 10 Entrepreneurship Statistics and Facts Seven out of any ten people in the world possess characteristics important for entrepreneurship.
48.6% of entrepreneurs say they started their businesses to have more control over their lifestyle and schedule.
60% of American teens say they would prefer starting their own business over getting a job.
16.5% of the US adult population is actively engaged in starting a new business.
14.8% of American adults say they expect to start a business in the next three years.
An average of 360 per 100,000 adult Americans were becoming entrepreneurs each month in 2021.
54.6% of entrepreneurs say they needed an investment between $0 and $24,999 to start their business.
Only 25.2% of US entrepreneurs make more than $4,000 per month.
31% of American entrepreneurs aspire to remain solopreneurs.
53% of entrepreneurs say they are extremely happy with their businesses.
General Entrepreneurship Stats 16.5% of the US adult population is actively engaged in starting a new business. According to the latest data, 17.8% of American men and 15.2% of American women are engaged in an early stage of entrepreneurial activities. Furthermore, 8.9% of Americans are owners of established businesses. This percentage jumps to 10.1% for men and drops to 7.6% for women in the USA. Finally, data reveals that 3.1% of female and 5.9% of male employees have been involved in entrepreneurial activities at their workplaces in the past three years.
(GEM Consortium)
60% of American teens say they would prefer starting their own business over getting a job. Gen Z entrepreneurship statistics reveal that three out of five American teenagers show an entrepreneurial spirit and believe that starting their own business would be a better option for them than having a regular job. Additionally, while 37% of them cite influencers and social media celebrities as their main motivation for feeling this way, 45% of teens believe that they can learn from everyday business owners as well. Lastly, 37% of American teens say they are interested in learning entrepreneurship through in-school or after-school programs.
(JAUSA)
14.8% of American adults say they expect to start a business in the next three years. Additionally, statistics about entrepreneurship reveal that 58.8% of Americans say they know someone who has started a new business, while another 63.2% believe that there are good business opportunities in their area. Just over two-thirds, or 66.9%, of Americans believe that it’s easy to start a business, and a similar percentage of 64.6% think that they have the necessary skills and knowledge to do it. On the flip side, 42.6% of Americans admit fear of failure as well.
(GEM Consortium)
Only 25.2% of US entrepreneurs make more than $4,000 per month. The latest facts about entrepreneurship show that the majority of American entrepreneurs, or 59.1%, have a monthly income of up to $2,000, while the remaining 15.7% make between $2,000 and $4,000 per month. Furthermore, 59.7% of them only employ themselves, 34.7% have between two and nine employees, and only 5.6% employ more than ten people. Lastly, data reveals that 12.8% of the currently active microbusinesses in the USA were founded during 2020, while 69.1% were started before and 18.1% after that year.
(GoDaddy)
While it is hard to properly measure the entrepreneurship success rate, a recent survey asked entrepreneurs how happy they are with their businesses. The results show that more than half, or 53% of them, ranked their happiness level at nine or ten out of ten, with eight being the average grade. On a more objective note, data reveals that close to 20% of newly-founded small businesses don’t survive their first year on the market, while almost half don’t make it through the five-year mark. In addition, 78% of the currently active small businesses are profitable.
(Guidant Financial)
Entrepreneurship Growth Statistics 80.9% of new entrepreneurs in the USA were driven by opportunity rather than necessity. Simply put, more than four out of five Americans in 2021 started a business because they saw an opportunity to do so, not because they needed to do it. In their entrepreneurial pursuit, these Americans created 4.7 jobs per 1,000 people. Finally, data reveals that the current first-year survival rate of startups in the USA is 81.7%, which means that two out of every ten of these entrepreneurs are likely to fail within a year of starting their business.
(Kauffman)
An average of 360 per 100,000 adult Americans were becoming entrepreneurs each month in 2021. The new entrepreneur statistics for 2021 further reveal that American men were more likely to pursue an entrepreneurial career than American women. Namely, the entrepreneurship growth rate for men in 2021 was 0.45, while women entrepreneurs were born at a 0.28% rate. Collectively, the average rate for both genders was 0.36%, which is a slight decrease from the 0.38% entrepreneurship growth rate of 2020.
(Kauffman)
Americans aged between 45 and 54 had the highest rate of new entrepreneurs in 2021, at 0.44%. According to the youth entrepreneurship statistics, the youngest Americans, aged between 20 and 34, had the lowest entrepreneurship growth rate at only 0.27%. On the other hand, Americans between 35 and 44 had the second-highest growth rate at 0.43%, just 0.01 percentage points behind the leading 45 to 54 age group. The rate at which new entrepreneurs were born in the 55 to 64 age bracket was also above average, at 0.37%.
(Kauffman)
The rate at which Americans with less than a high school degree were becoming entrepreneurs in 2021 was 0.66%. The US entrepreneurship statistics indicate that the likelihood of Americans becoming entrepreneurs is lower among people with higher education. While those with less than a high school degree had the highest growth rate, high school graduates had the second-highest, at 40%. Furthermore, Americans with some college education had a slightly lower rate at 0.39%, and college graduates had the lowest entrepreneurship growth rate from all groups at only 0.31%.
(Kauffman)
The growth rate of new Black entrepreneurs for 2021 was 0.28%. Black entrepreneurship statistics show that the entrepreneurship growth rate in the country was lowest among individuals who identify as African-American. The rate of new entrepreneurs for White Americans was slightly higher at 0.33%. Furthermore, entrepreneurship among Asian Americans was growing at a 0.36% rate, while individuals that identify as Latino had the highest entrepreneurial growth rate of 0.54%. Additionally, data reveals that immigrants had a higher entrepreneurship growth rate of 0.58% compared to native-born Americans, who grew at a 0.32% rate.
(Kauffman)
Facts About Entrepreneurs Seven out of any ten people in the world possess characteristics important for entrepreneurship. However, only one-third of the global population does so strongly, according to the latest Ipsos Entrepreneurial Spirit Index. Millennials are the generation that is the most suited for entrepreneurship, with 36% of them showing very high and just as many showing high entrepreneurial spirit. Interestingly, the shares of men and women from all ages showing very high entrepreneurial spirit are tied at 32%.
(Ipsos)
48.6% of entrepreneurs say they started their businesses to have more control over their lifestyle and schedule. According to the entrepreneurship facts from a recent survey, the main reason entrepreneurs start a business is to get more control over how they spend their time, cited by almost half of the respondents. Additionally, 47.4% say they wanted to be their own boss and work on things that matter to them. Moreover, 46.8% did it because it would allow them to take advantage of their skills and talent. Interestingly, making more money is only the fourth most popular reason for starting a business, cited by 44.7% of entrepreneurs.
(Entre CSUSB)
54.6% of entrepreneurs say they needed an investment between $0 and $24,999 to start their business. Female entrepreneurship statistics reveal that women are more likely to do more with less, as 65.6% of them only needed an investment of between $0 and $24,999 to start their business, while just 42.9% of the men agreed. Furthermore, 34.3% of entrepreneurs (40.7% men vs 28.7% women) say they needed between $25,000 and $249,999, and 7.6% (11.6% men vs 3.6% women) needed between $250,000 and $999,999. Finally, 4.8% of male and 2.2% of female entrepreneurs say they needed more than $1 million to start their businesses.
(Entre CSUSB)
Statistics about entrepreneurs show that 63% of Hispanics and 62% of Black Americans needed capital of up to $25,000 to start their businesses. The percentages of White and Native Americans who agree with them are slightly smaller at 54% and 53%. Moreover, data reveals that 21.2% of entrepreneurs from all races say they did not seek outside capital to start their businesses. On the other hand, 61.6% of those who did seek capital say gaining access to it was either somewhat or very difficult.
(Entre CSUSB)
31% of American entrepreneurs aspire to remain solopreneurs. One of the most interesting entrepreneur facts is that almost a third of them don’t have ambitions to grow their business. As a matter of fact, only 6% of US entrepreneurs say they want to build a corporate empire, while 8% say they aspire to become unicorns. Another 14% say they want to grow their business to a mid-size enterprise with a physical location and a significant number of employees. The largest portion of US entrepreneurs, or 34%, aspire to become small businesses with a physical location and a small number of employees.
(GoDaddy)
FAQs on Entrepreneurship Statistics
What percentage of people are entrepreneurs?
In the United States, 16.5% of adults are engaged in some sort of early-stage entrepreneurial activity, while 8.9% are owners of already established businesses.
(GEM Consortium)
What is the growth rate of entrepreneurship?
The average growth rate of entrepreneurship in the USA for 2021 is 0.36%. In simple terms, an average of 360 out of 100,000 adult Americans became entrepreneurs each month in 2021.
(Kauffman)
What percent of entrepreneurs went to college?
According to the results of a recent survey, 17% of US entrepreneurs have some college education, 26% of them are college graduates, and 18% have a postgraduate degree.
(CNBC)
The Summary As the entrepreneurs facts reveal, most of us have an entrepreneurial spirit but is that enough for us to leave our everyday job and start chasing our dreams?! The 60% share of teenagers who prefer being business owners to employees indicates that most of us have ideas, but the 0.36% entrepreneurship growth rate indicates that we rarely execute them. What is encouraging is that most entrepreneurs are very happy with the decision to start their business, even though almost a third of them don’t have lofty ambitions and only wish to do their own thing and make a living doing it.
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