President Joe Biden on Thursday met with entrepreneurs at the White House as his administration highlights small business growth in 2021 as a bright spot in the nation’s economic recovery. 

In 2021, Americans applied to start 5.4 million new businesses, a more than two-thirds increase from the previous five-year average of 3.2 million new applications before the pandemic.

“That’s the highest rate of small business creation ever,” President Biden said. “The reason for that is because we’re giving people financial security to take a risk.”

The White House published a report Thursday on what they called a “small business boom” in 2021, including 1.9 million jobs created by businesses with less than 50 employees in the first three quarters of 2021.

Nearly half of private sector workers come from small businesses, the president said Thursday. Biden administration officials said they’ve distributed more than $450 billion to millions of small businesses in emergency relief. 

Yet President Biden still faces a uniquely challenging position: even as he highlights a robust jobs market, inflation is hampering that growth, with prices 8.5% higher than a year prior according to a report last month. The U.S. economy also shrank in the first quarter of 2022, per new numbers out Thursday. But economists say jobs recovery could still be a better indicator of the economy's improvement overall.

The president hosted a roundtable on Thursday with the local D.C. coffee shop owners of Lost Sock Roasters, which just opened their first brick-and-mortar location last year, along with the founders of The Box Street Social in San Antonio, Texas and Unique Crafts by Jenn in Miami.

“It reminds us that anything and everything is possible in America,” Biden said.  

The White House also highlighted a March report from the Kauffman Foundation that found an increase in new entrepreneurship especially among the Latino population.

For the second time on Thursday, the president also drew contrast between his administration’s efforts and Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida’s 11-point proposal, which would raise taxes on the millions of Americans who don’t make enough to pay federal income tax. 

The White House in their new report dubbed the tax increases part of a “Congressional Republican proposal,” despite GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s public opposition.

They included an analysis that estimates taxes would increase for nearly half of small business owners under Scott’s plan.