Business Owners and the Self-Employed: Thirty-Three Million (And Counting!)

This paper documents efforts at the US Census Bureau to develop a comprehensive, longitudinally linked database of self-employment jobs and associated business entities to create measures of change over time in business and job activities. We use these linkages to produce three new sets of statistics specifically about nonemployer business activity, meaning self-employment work involving only the business owner and no paid employees. First, we show how many people transition to and from self-employment and wage and salary jobs, and how much simultaneous job holding happens during these transitions. Second, we describe what types of nonemployer entities enter and exit each year and as well as how many nonemployer businesses transition from one type of legal form of organization to another. Finally, we link people to nonemployer businesses and examine how many jobs start and end each year by characteristics of both the owners and their businesses.