There have never been so many business creations as in 2020. INSEE has counted nearly 850,000, an absolute record.

But in detail, it is mainly individual companies and in particular micro-entrepreneurs carrying out home delivery, which reflects the changes induced by the health crisis.

We have never created as many companies as in 2020. This is indicated by the new INSEE report which lists nearly 850,000 new companies.

This represents an increase of 4% compared to 2019, which was already a record year.

But this increase is a trompe l'oeil.

Indeed, it is largely due to the explosion of micro-entrepreneurs and not to traditional businesses which are slightly less numerous to see the light of day than last year.

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Explosion of home delivery people

More specifically, of the 850,000 newly created businesses, 630,000 are sole proprietorships.

And within this category, it is in particular that of "transport and storage" which exploded with 22% more than in 2019. Behind this denomination, we find for a large part the home deliverers, who have the micro-entrepreneur status.

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However, their activity took off when restaurants had to convert to the production of take-out meals.

There is therefore clearly a Covid effect in the figures published by INSEE.

We can see this all the more since the creations of classic companies, those with a company status, were slightly less numerous than the previous year.

They fell 0.2 points in 2020.