More business owners are setting up shop in Wisconsin

The State Department of Financial Institutions says the number of new businesses has risen nearly 9-percent over the same time last year. The department tracks fifteen different types of what it terms “business entities.” That term covers businesses big and small.

In the first half of this year, just over 19,000 new businesses were formed. DFI Secretary Peter Bildsten says that amounts to an eight-point-eight percent increase over the same time last year, plus it comes on top of modest gains in 2011. “It doesn’t necessarily tie to net new jobs but it is encouraging to see enough confidence out there that people and groups are forming new businesses,” he says. “The eight point eight percent follows up on a two point three percent increase in all of 2011. So we’ve accelerated that pace in the first half of this year.”

Bildsten says the growth in new business formation has the potential to be the largest Wisconsin has seen in ten years.

Most of the new businesses were in the form of Limited Liability Companies. LLC’s range from the smallest “mom and pop” type businesses all the way to huge companies that employ thousands of people.

This story has been corrected from the original version, which referred to LLC’s as Limited Liability Corporations.