DALLAS — From the beginning of the pandemic until now, Texans have filed 1,026,947 applications to start new businesses.
If you divide that by the 27 months of the pandemic, that’s an average of 38,035 new business applications here each month. That’s far more than any of the months that came before COVID-19.
Undoubtedly, some of those were entrepreneurs who started multiple businesses at once or who started a business that quickly failed… and then started another.
Statistics say that many of these new enterprises will go under: 18.4% of new businesses fail in the first year, while 30.6% of them falter within the first two years.
Some entrepreneurs who struck out may be going back to traditional jobs.
In fact, they may be part of this impressive number: In just the first quarter of this year, there were 592,000 more people hired (1,818,000) in Texas than who quit their jobs (1,226,000) in Texas.
More older Texans are on the job
Some of those new hires also might be older workers coming out of retirement.
A disproportionate number of older employees dropped out of the workforce in the pandemic and retired. But some of them may be un-retiring now.
According to Magnify Money by Lending Tree, the percentage of people in Texas 65 and older who are working has gone up from 23% in early 2020 to 25% in early 2022.
Several years ago, we were reporting on age discrimination and how hard it was for some older workers to land jobs. That is likely a struggle some of them are still facing.
But it appears that there is more opportunity now than before for seasoned employees.
In fact, SHRM, the Society for HR Management, has a report out that says the older set is actually sought after right now because of their experience and the fact that they can serve as mentors and teach those important little nuanced things on the job "for which younger employees cannot be trained."