The data says founders would do it again. Even in this economy.

For decades, the career advice was simple: get the degree, get the job, get the stability. Entrepreneurship was for people with a safety net or a tolerance for chaos. The responsible move was a regular paycheck.

That script is outdated. And founders have been rewriting it for years.

Shopify partnered with The Harris Poll to survey business owners across five markets—the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and Spain—on how they think about financial security, career risk, and whether they'd make the same choice again. The results suggest the traditional career path is losing its core selling point.

The safety of a paycheck is a reputation, not a reality

In each market we surveyed, business owners were more likely to say entrepreneurship feels more financially secure than a traditional job. Not equally secure, more secure. In the U.S., the margin was roughly two to one—39% versus 18%. The pattern held in every country, including Canada, where the survey showed that economic anxiety runs the deepest. 

Fewer than three in 10 respondents in every market said a traditional paycheck feels like the safer bet. This is a significant departure from the long-held assumption that employment is the obvious safe harbor.

Yet when asked in the abstract whether traditional employment provides long-term stability, the majority still said yes. There's a word for something everyone assumes is true but fewer and fewer people actually experience: a reputation. Traditional employment still has one. People still associate jobs with stability as a concept, even as their own lives tell them something different. The reputation of a 9-5 is outlasting its reality. That gap between the idea of a job and the truth of a job is where this story lives.

A traditional job doesn't feel easier anymore, either

In four of the five markets surveyed, respondents were more likely to say a traditional job requires more effort than running a business. The reasons are well-documented: longer hours, more meetings, less decision-making power, and the constant pressure of proving your value inside an organization that may restructure your role anyway. The demands of employment grew while the freedoms stagnated.

In the U.S., nearly twice as many people said employment takes more effort than entrepreneurship (46% versus 24%). Most markets leaned the same way. Spain was the one exception. It was the only country where more respondents said running a business is harder. And yet Spanish founders were among the most likely to say they'd do it all over again. They know it's harder. They chose it anyway. 

Nobody who's built something would call it easy. Any entrepreneur knows better. But the assumption that a job is the manageable path and running a business is the grueling one no longer holds. Both are demanding. The difference is that one offers less and less autonomy. The other is built on it. In one, every hour of effort belongs to someone else. In the other, it's yours

The pull is stronger than the push

When people leave traditional jobs to start businesses, the assumption is that they're being pushed, that they got shut out of other opportunities with nowhere else to go. The data tells a different story.

Across all five markets, a clear majority of founders—between 61 and 69 percent—said starting a business felt like moving toward something they wanted, not away from something unstable. Canada was the most pressure-driven market in the study, with job insecurity as the top cited driver at 60%, and the majority there still described the move to entrepreneurship as aspirational. If the pull outweighs the push even in the market most likely to contradict it, the "last resort" framing loses its weight.

Look at what's actually driving the shift among founders who were influenced by employment concerns: limited flexibility, lack of autonomy, a desire for more meaningful work. The old bargain of traditional employment was straightforward. Trade some freedom for stability. But if stability is no longer guaranteed, the trade stops making sense.

It helps that the barriers that once made starting feel out of reach are falling too. In the U.S., 86% of entrepreneurs say ecommerce platforms have made it easier to start a business than a decade ago. And 67% say AI tools are making entrepreneurship more accessible. Across markets, founders said technology is making the leap from one day to day one shorter.

Founders are clear-eyed, not starry-eyed

None of this means founders are romantics. They're pragmatic about risk.

Between 62 and 72 percent said they'd consider returning to traditional employment if economic conditions worsened over the next year. The reasons were overwhelmingly practical: stable income, benefits, job security. The calculus of keeping the lights on, not a verdict on entrepreneurship itself. Sometimes the math requires a paycheck.

Cash flow is a grind. The search for customers never stops. The economy presses on them the same way it presses on everyone.

And still, up to 95% of founders across these markets say building their business is one of their proudest accomplishments. When asked whether they'd choose to start again (in this economy, in 2026) the answer was a resounding yes: 90% in Australia, 89% in the U.S., 87% in Spain, 85% in the U.K., 78% in Canada. 

Across markets, most founders would make the same choice again. Not because it's easy. Because it's theirs.

The risk hasn’t disappeared. But the calculus has changed. Founders just did the math a long time ago .

Methodology
Survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Shopify from March 9–25, 2026, across five markets: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain. Respondents were business owners and senior decision-makers.