Bright key facts / Demonstrated
AI is helping small businesses get more of their own ideas off the ground
New Census figures show the scale of America's nonemployer economy. Individual business accounts offer a closer look at how AI can expand what an owner is able to do.
- AI’s role
- In vendor-published accounts, AI helped owners build a customer-facing locator, write forecasting code, improve instructions and organize inventory work.
- Documented result
- The Census Bureau's latest Nonemployer Statistics, released September 29, 2026, count 31,985,874 U.S. businesses with no paid employees in 2024. That is nearly 32 million establishments across the industries the program covers. 2024 Census data
- Important limitation
- These are business establishments, and the count includes different legal structures and income levels. It should not be read as 32 million people earning a full-time living alone, or as the number of new businesses created that year. The program covers tax-filing businesses that meet its receipts thresholds. Census definitions and scope