If starting a business is part of the American Dream, the dream is coming true for an increasing number of people.

Americans Flock to Launch New Businesses at Record Levels. What's Fueling The Entrepreneurial Boom?

Full Bio Diccon Hyatt is an experienced financial and economics reporter. He's written hundreds of articles breaking down complex financial topics in plain language, emphasizing the impact that economic currents would have on individuals' finances and the market. He has a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Delaware.

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Published April 24, 2026

03:45 PM EDT

Tom Brady is seen cutting the ribbon at the CardVault flagship party on February 06, 2026 in San Francisco, California.

Tom Brady opens a new CardVault by Tom Brady store in San Francisco in February, part of a U.S. business-creation surge that began during the pandemic and has yet to fade. Michael Simon / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

A majority of U.S. adults—and more than two-thirds of Gen Z—consider starting a business part of the American dream, a recent survey found.
The survey mirrors a 2020 surge in business creation that outlived the COVID-19 pandemic that spawned it.
New demand for businesses serving the work-from-home lifestyle created opportunities for entrepreneurs, and federal stimulus made starting a business more financially realistic for many.

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More U.S. adults say they want to start their own businesses, and the data shows it's not just talk.

Among nonbusiness owners, 74% of Gen Zers and 58% of millennials said they wanted to own a business someday, according to the 2026 Wells Fargo Money Study, out last month.1 The survey found that 61% of adults and 69% of Gen Z consider business ownership "part of the American dream." Among Gen Z non-owners who want to start a business, 80% said it would let them "control their own destiny."

The survey tracks a pandemic-era trend still going strong. Since COVID-19 shuttered much of the economy in 2020, Americans have been filing business applications at rates well above pre-pandemic levels—1.6 million in the first quarter of 2026, up from 1 million in the same quarter of 2019, Census Bureau data show.2

What This Means for the Economy

Waves of new businesses tend to spur innovation and force incumbents to compete, two drivers of long-run economic growth, according to economists.

Researchers have offered several explanations for why the startup surge has outlasted the pandemic.

First, there was the sudden shift to remote work that restructured the economy, John C. Haltiwanger, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, argued in a 2022 paper. The new firms clustered in different industries than those they replaced—mostly businesses catering to the work-from-home economy. For example, online retailers drove 33% of the surge.

Financial conditions helped, Haltiwanger found: unlike the 2008 recession, financial institutions stayed healthy during the COVID-19 downturn, while interest rates were at near zero.

That made it easier for people, including those laid off during the lockdowns, to get business loans. On top of that, the federal stimulus kept consumer spending afloat.

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The business-start-up boom hasn't gone the way of footprint stickers dotting the floors of public places, and technological changes may be reinforcing the trend.

AI adoption may be driving a wave of new businesses, according to Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, the private-equity firm.

Graph showing the number of business applications in high and low AI adoption sectors from Dec 2006 to Oct 2023

Apollo Global Management

AI and large language models are "dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of launching a company," Slok wrote in a recent note, pointing to data that new-firm creation is running faster in sectors with above-average AI adoption—led by information, professional services and finance—than in sectors where adoption lags, such as transportation, mining, and food services.34

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