5 Stocks That Will Benefit From the Self-Employment Boom

 According to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, applications for new businesses in the U.S. hit a record high of more than 883,000 during the second quarter of 2020, building on a trend toward self-employment in recent years. And the U.S. Census Bureau's statistics for the third quarter are showing an even more dramatic spike. During the week ending Sept. 26, 2020, new business applications increased 44% from the same period in 2019 to over 95,000.

The reason? For many people, layoffs during the pandemic were the last straw, and working for themselves and marketing their skillsets is easier than ever thanks to advances in technology. There are plenty of ways to invest in this emerging movement as well. Five that I think are worth a look for the decade ahead are Etsy (NASDAQ:ETSY), Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Wix.com (NASDAQ:WIX), Fiverr (NYSE:FVRR), and Cloudflare (NYSE:NET).

Retail should be a great pathway to entrepreneurship and business ownership, but big box stores and e-commerce giant Amazon have made it difficult for small businesses to thrive by h how hard is computer science them on price (and thus all but eliminating profit margins). But a new digital era is breathing life back into small business retailers, reducing overhead costs (there's little to no need for significant real estate investment, and technology to improve operating efficiency) and satisfying consumer demand for variety.

Etsy has been a big beneficiary of this movement, and 2020 could be a landmark year for the online marketplace for handmade goods. Through the first half of the year, the number of global sellers utilizing Etsy (comprising both creative sole proprietors and small businesses with just a few employees) has increased 35% from a year ago to over 3.1 million. The number of active buyers has increased by 41% year over year to over 60 million. The results have been game-changing for Etsy. The value of gross merchandise sold on the marketplace was up 91% through the first half of 2020 to $4.04 billion.