New business creation in the United States unexpectedly—yet happily—increased in 2020 and 2021. Reasons for the increase can be discerned: layoffs, shifts in how people want to work, industry changes including the move to more online commerce, greater shipping needs, etc. But we can’t necessarily discern the future course of entrepreneurship in the existing data. We can try to project and predict; there are good reasons to be both optimistic and pessimistic.
