Intuit QuickBooks Projects 17 Million New Entrepreneurs To Join Rapidly Growing Small Business Economy in 2022

After two record-breaking years of new business creation, Intuit QuickBooks forecasts the trend will persist in 2022, predicting up to 17 million new small businesses to be formed. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to influence how Americans want to work, with an overwhelming 83% of people saying it has accelerated their plans to start a business. These findings and more are highlighted in the QuickBooks New Business Insights report, based on a recent survey of 8,000 U.S. employees commissioned by Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU), the global technology platform that makes QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp.

The report’s findings underscore the importance of small businesses to the overall economy and consumers’ ongoing appetite to support them as we head into 2022.

• Small businesses are driving the economy and job creation. More than 8 in 10 people (86%) said that small businesses are crucial to the economy. And of the projected 17 million new businesses expected to start in 2022, an estimated 5.6 million will hire employees. This projection, based on the U.S. Census Bureau data of Employer Identification Numbers (EIN), smashes the previous record set in 2020 of 4.3 million and is up 44% from the 2019 mark of 3.5 million.
• The dream of Entrepreneurship lives on. More than half (57%) of respondents said they dream of one day owning their own business, citing “be my own boss” and “to have more control over my future” as their leading motivations.
• These new entrepreneurs have consumer sentiment on their side. Nearly 3 in 5 people in the U.S. (57%) said they intend to spend more money at small businesses over the next six months because they want to help local employers and enjoy the stellar customer service they get. This is in addition to the 50% of respondents who said they’ve spent more with small businesses during the pandemic.

“When the pandemic hit, we saw an unprecedented number of new businesses formed as millions of people spotted new opportunities brought on by the ‘new normal’ or reevaluated their priorities,” said Alex Chriss, executive vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group. “Now, almost two years later, we’re continuing to see this trend, as 2022 promises to deliver even more small business growth and prosperity.”