Founder Data ReportFour Out of Five Jobs Added Last Quarter Came From a Business That Already Existed.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts every job created and destroyed in the private sector, and splits each side between businesses that were already open and businesses that opened or closed. 79.1% of the gains came from businesses already open.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts every job created and every job destroyed in the American private sector, and splits each side in two: jobs at establishments that were already operating, and jobs at establishments that opened or closed. In the latest quarter, 79.1% of the 7.84 million jobs added came from businesses that were already open and simply grew. 20.9% came from new openings. The losses split the same way: 80.2% of the 7.25 million jobs lost came from businesses that stayed open and cut, not from businesses that closed.
- 7.84 million private-sector jobs were added last quarter and 7.25 million were lost. The net was 593,000 — 3.9% of the gross flow.
- 79.1% of the jobs added came from establishments that already existed and expanded. 20.9% came from establishments that opened.
- 80.2% of the jobs lost came from establishments that stayed open and shrank. 19.8% came from establishments that closed.
- Neither share has fallen below 75% in any of the 80 quarters since 2006.
- In the second quarter of 2020, the worst on record, 85.6% of the 20.2 million jobs lost came from businesses that stayed open.
Growth is not a launch. It is a hire.
The story the economy tells about itself is a story about starting and folding. A business launches, a business fails, the numbers move. That is not what the data underneath the monthly headline actually says.
Business Employment Dynamics tracks the gross flows: every job gained and every job lost, with each side split between establishments that were already operating and establishments that opened or closed during the quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2025, businesses that were already open contributed 6.20 million of the 7.84 million jobs added — 79.1%. Everything that opened for the first time contributed 1.64 million.
Both rows are on the same axis, each summing to 100% of its own side. Orange is the already-operating share on both rows; slate is the opening or closing share. The two rows are not netted against each other.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, total private, seasonally adjusted, retrieved from the BLS public API on September 11, 2026. Fourth quarter of 2025.
The losses work the same way, and that is the harder half
Closures get the attention because they are final. They are also the minority of the damage. 5.81 million of the 7.25 million jobs lost last quarter came from establishments that stayed open and cut — 80.2%. Closures accounted for 1.43 million, 19.8%.
That ratio is unusually stable. Across all 80 quarters from 2006 through 2025 the contracting share of job losses never fell below 79.6% (its low was 2024Q4), and the expanding share of job gains never fell below 77.5% (its low was 2020Q2). The second quarter of 2020 is the test case, and it goes the other way from the one most people would guess: in the worst quarter in the series, the share of job loss coming from businesses that did not close went up, to 85.6%.
Even in the quarter the economy shut down, closures were 14.4% of the job loss — about one seventh. The other six sevenths were businesses that survived and cut. The legend names both colours; segment labels appear only where the bar is wide enough to hold them.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, total private, seasonally adjusted, retrieved from the BLS public API on September 11, 2026. Second quarter of 2020, the largest quarterly job loss in the series.
New openings are doing slightly more of the hiring than they were
One thing has moved, and it is worth stating carefully because it is small. Openings accounted for 20.7% of gross job gains across 2024 and 2025, against 18.4% in 2016 through 2019 — up 2.3 percentage points, and the highest of any period since 2006. But the series is not a straight line: 2008 through 2009 reached 20.3%, the low was 18.3% in 2014-15, and 2006 through 2007 was already 19.5%. Read as a recovery from a mid-2010s trough, not a break with the past.
The mechanism matters more than the direction. The opening share rose for two reasons at once: openings brought 196,000 more jobs per quarter than they did in 2016 through 2019, up 14.1%, and expansions at existing businesses brought 84,000 fewer, down 1.4%. New businesses did not overtake anything: openings grew 14.1% while the total they are measured against grew 1.5%, from 7.54 million to 7.65 million jobs a quarter. A share can rise on a growing base when one side of it is going backwards.
The orange bar is 2024-25, the highest of the eight periods — but the range across twenty years is only 18.3% to 20.7%, so read the printed values rather than the bar lengths. The series is not monotone: it fell from 20.3% in 2008-09 to 18.3% in 2014-15 before recovering.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, total private, seasonally adjusted, retrieved from the BLS public API on September 11, 2026. Period figures are pooled across all quarters in each span.
Nobody writes a headline about a four-person shop going to five. Four fifths of the economy’s job growth is exactly that.
What to do with this
The practical point is not that startups are overrated. It is that the thing you are doing — carrying an existing business and adding one person when you can afford it — is not a sideshow to the real economy. It is 79.1% of it. The launches that get written about are the other fifth.
It also reframes what a bad quarter looks like. If you are watching for closure as the signal that things have turned, you are watching the smaller number — 19.8% of job losses last quarter, and only 14.4% in the worst quarter in the series. The damage shows up first as businesses that stay open and get smaller. That is a quieter signal and it is the one that moves.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, total private, seasonally adjusted, retrieved from the BLS public API on September 11, 2026. Fourth quarter of 2025; 2020Q2; and 2024-25 pooled.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do most new jobs actually come from?
In the fourth quarter of 2025, 79.1% of the 7.84 million private-sector jobs added came from establishments that already existed and expanded. 20.9% came from establishments that opened. That split has held in every quarter since 2006.
Do most job losses come from businesses closing?
No. 80.2% of the 7.25 million jobs lost in the latest quarter came from establishments that stayed open and cut staff. Closures accounted for 19.8%.
What is Business Employment Dynamics?
A quarterly Bureau of Labor Statistics series built from state unemployment insurance records covering essentially all private employers. It reports gross job gains and gross job losses — the flows underneath the net monthly employment change — and splits each into jobs at establishments that were already operating and jobs at establishments that opened or closed.
What happened in the second quarter of 2020?
20.2 million private-sector jobs were lost, the most in the series. 85.6% of that came from establishments that stayed open; 14.4% from establishments that closed.
Is the share of jobs coming from new businesses rising?
Slightly. Openings accounted for 20.7% of gross job gains across 2024-2025, the highest of any period since 2006, against 18.4% in 2016-2019. The move is 2.3 percentage points and the series is not a straight line — 2008-2009 reached 20.3%.
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This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.