If you want to understand who is actually starting businesses in America right now, stop looking at the headlines about venture capital rounds and read the Kauffman Foundation's numbers instead.
The foundation released its National Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2025 in May 2026. It's the most comprehensive look at who is actually launching businesses in America - tracked over 30 years, using data independent of any vendor or platform.
The headline finding is one that most business media has underreported: immigrants are now the primary engine of new business creation in the United States.
The Numbers
In 2025, approximately 6.6 million American adults launched a new business. That's a significant number - and it confirms that overall entrepreneurship has returned to pre-pandemic levels after years of volatility.
But the deeper story is in who is doing the starting.
Immigrants launched approximately 2.3 million of those businesses. The rate of new business creation among immigrants was roughly double the rate among native-born Americans. The Kauffman researchers note that immigrants were the "primary driver" of the broader rebound in startup activity.
By demographic group:
- Latino Americans started approximately 2 million businesses in 2025
- Black Americans launched roughly 1.1 million
- White Americans started approximately 4 million
To understand how significant the immigrant figure is: immigrants represent about 14% of the U.S. population but were responsible for more than 34% of new business launches in 2025.
What's Driving This
The Kauffman data offers two competing explanations for why people start businesses - and the breakdown matters.
"Opportunity entrepreneurship" means someone chose to start a business because they saw a viable path forward. "Necessity entrepreneurship" means someone started a business because other options - jobs, income - weren't available to them.
The report found that the share of opportunity-based starts increased in 2025 from its 2020 low, but it still hasn't returned to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the number of businesses started out of necessity rose in 2025 across multiple demographic groups - including among immigrant entrepreneurs.
In plain terms: some of the people launching businesses right now are doing so because the labor market isn't giving them another option. That's not a knock on their businesses - some of the most durable small businesses in America were started out of necessity. But it does tell you something important about the economic environment immigrants are navigating.
The Survival Picture
New businesses launched in 2025 had an early survival rate of 77.9% - a slight decrease from 2024 and still below pre-pandemic rates.
The rate of new job creation from startups was 5.3 jobs per 1,000 people - meaningfully below the peaks of the late 1990s and the pre-pandemic period. In other words, new businesses are forming, but they're not yet generating jobs at the rate the economy has historically managed.
The gender gap persisted: men started businesses at a higher rate than women, and that gap slightly widened in 2025 despite both rates being above pre-pandemic levels.
What This Means for You
If you are an immigrant business owner, or you run in communities with high rates of immigrant entrepreneurship - restaurants, construction, cleaning and home services, retail - the Kauffman data tells you that you are not the exception. You are part of the dominant trend in American new business formation.
If you are thinking about business partnerships, supplier relationships, or serving small business customers, the demographics of new business creation in the U.S. are shifting. The typical new business owner in 2025 doesn't look like the typical business owner from 30 years ago.
And if you are a policy watcher: the Kauffman report shows a meaningful chunk of new business creation is coming from necessity - not pure opportunity. Programs that reduce startup friction and improve access to small business credit for immigrant entrepreneurs aren't charity. They're infrastructure for the engine that's actually running.
About the Data
The Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship Index is built from a nationally representative survey. It is methodologically independent - not paid for by a software company, a payment platform, or a lender with an interest in showing adoption figures. The foundation has been tracking these numbers since 1996.
That independence matters when you're trying to get an honest read on who is actually starting businesses and why.
Sources: Kauffman Foundation - National Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2025 - Forbes, May 19, 2026 - Three Takeaways from the Kauffman Report - Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship
Alex Rivera covers economic news and bilingual small business coverage for The Useful Daily.