Following the pandemic when thousands of businesses were forcibly closed and many failed, leaving people unemployed and facing big changes in their lives, an unprecedented number launched their own businesses escalating the rate of entrepreneurship.

According to the Washington Post nearly 1 in 5 adults — 19 percent — are in the process of founding a business or have done so in the past 3 and a half years, based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, recently released by Babson College. That is the highest level since the survey began in 1999.

In Montana, with more than 30,000 new businesses registered to date in 2023, the state appears to be on pace to have another record year of new business registration. New business registrations in Montana surged in June 2023 with roughly 5,300 new businesses registered with the Secretary of State’s Office, easily surpassing the approximately 4,300 new registrations in June of 2022.

The Montana Business Economic Report revealed 51,508 new businesses registered in 2021, surpassing the 2020 total by more than 12,000. In 2022 the state had record growth with some 53,000 businesses registering.

“We’re seeing an upward trend in entrepreneurship that’s continued through the pandemic, and that’s a really great sign,” said Donna Kelley, a professor at Babson College and the report’s lead author. “It means businesses are introducing innovation, creating jobs and contributing to the competitiveness of the United States.”

Globally, the United States had the third-highest entrepreneurship rate among 21 high-income economies, lagging behind the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but ahead of Canada and the United Kingdom, researchers found.

Applications for new businesses spiked to an all-time high in July 2020, when more than 550,000 Americans filed paperwork to start their own companies. A boost in government funding — in the form of stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits and small-business loans — gave many people the financial cushion to get started.

Since then, business registrations have remained well above pre-pandemic levels.

But also being reported is that many small businesses founded in recent years are struggling due to economic uncertainty, higher costs and a slowdown in consumer spending. Business closures ticked up last year, to 5.2 percent from 2.9 percent in 2019.

Adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were nearly twice as likely to start businesses as those between 35 and 64. And although men are still slightly more likely than women to start their own companies, that gap continues to narrow. There was also a clear shift away from service industries, such as finance and real estate, toward manufacturing and logistics.