The record number of new small business applications filed since Joe Biden took office has passed the 20 million mark, a White House official told Yahoo Finance on Thursday morning before the milestone was formally announced.
This new, perhaps mostly psychological, achievement comes as Biden tries to shore up his economic legacy before leaving for office in about two months, with President-elect Donald Trump set to replace him.
“Under our Administration, we have had the three strongest years of new business applications on record—and we are on track for a fourth,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s the best single Presidential term for new business applications in history.”
The passing of the milestone, which is gathered by the US Census Bureau and was released Thursday morning, comes after Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris faced a resounding defeat at the polls last week in a campaign that saw voters largely focused on the issue of inflation above all else.
Voters repeatedly looked past other positive economic indicators such as small business growth that Democrats relentlessly touted.
Still, this growth in new small businesses is the biggest for a president since records began to be kept in 2004. The White House, in a fact sheet shared with Yahoo Finance in advance, tried to underline the wide array of groups that were helped, calling it “a small business boom across the country.”
Other measures of small business in the US have offered more mixed results. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index is a survey of small businesses and rose by 2.2 points in October and matched a two-year high but also marked the 34th consecutive month below the index’s 50-year average.
“With the election over, small business owners will begin to feel less uncertain about future business conditions,” NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a recent statement, but he added, “Small business owners are still facing unprecedented economic adversity.”
The White House said that the growth in new applications was fueled by various government investments that opened new lending opportunities and other forms of government assistance.
In September, Harris unveiled a small business plan built around a $50,000 tax credit for small businesses with an overall goal of outpacing Biden and spurring 25 million new small business applications in the next term.
Business applications are required to be filed with the government; they can be for everything from freelance and gig workers who want to organize their work and gain tax advantages to the formation of a more traditional new business, like a store complete with employees and services.