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Garage Entrepreneurs or just Self-Employed? An Investigation into Nonemployer Entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Adela Luque
  • Vitaliy Novik

Abstract

Nonemployers, businesses without employees, account for most businesses in the U.S. yet are poorly understood. We use restricted administrative and survey data to describe nonemployer dynamics, overall performance, and performance by demographic group. We find that eventual outcome – migration to employer status, continuing as a nonemployer, or exit – is closely related to receipt growth. We provide estimates of employment creation by firms that began as nonemployers and become employers (migrants), estimating that relative to all firms born in 1996, nonemployer migrants accounted for 3-17% of all net jobs in the seventh year after startup. Moreover, we find that migrants’ employment creation declined by 54% for the cohorts born between 1996 to 2014. Our results are consistent with increased adjustment frictions in recent periods, and suggest accessibility to transformative entrepreneurship for everyday Americans has declined.

Suggested Citation

  • Adela Luque & Vitaliy Novik, 2024. "Garage Entrepreneurs or just Self-Employed? An Investigation into Nonemployer Entrepreneurship," Working Papers 24-61, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-61
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Christopher Goetz & Henry Hyatt & Zachary Kroff & Kristin Sandusky & Martha Stinson, 2025. "Business Owners and the Self-Employed: Thirty-Three Million (And Counting!)," NBER Chapters, in: The Changing Nature of Work, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis

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