There's a very thin line between "full-time self-employment" and unemployment. As the article itself states, the count of new business applications correlates with economic downturns and rise in unemployment. If no one is hiring you it's easy to write "entrepreneur" or "AI startup founder" or "influencer" on your LinkedIn. Doubly so when you don't even need to go to city hall to register your business, just press a few buttons online and you'll have an entity in any state you want.

Conspicuously missing from the article among all the other numbers – how many of these businesses earn enough money to pay the owner's rent?