Canada is increasingly becoming a country of small entrepreneurs, says a new report from CIBC pointing to a sharp rise in the number of Canadians starting their own businesses.
The report finds that in June more than half a million Canadians said they had begun their own businesses over the past two years, a record number. Perhaps most encouraging, 80 per cent of new owners say they made the decision to strike out on their own voluntarily, not because they couldn't find a job.
That's a welcome shift from the early 1990s and 2008, when the recession and layoffs drove more and more Canadians into involuntary self-employment.
About 15 per cent of Canada's labour force is self-employed.
But the CIBC study, which drew its data from research commissioned from Statistics Canada, suggests the proportion will rise in the future.
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