Record Number of Workers Quit Jobs to Become Self-Employed Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

A woman using a laptop on a dining room table set up as a remote office to work from home in the UK on March 3, 2020. Joe Giddens/PA

A historic number of workers have become their own bosses amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (pdf).

As of October, there were about 9.44 million unincorporated self-employed individuals in the United States, as per the bureau’s data. In October 2020, there were about 8.78 million unincorporated self-employed individuals in the country.