Every month, Washington gets a fresh count of the jobs artificial intelligence (AI) is eliminating. But nobody seems to be counting the number of jobs AI is creating.

So far this year, employers have pointed to AI in more than 120,000 announced US job cuts, more than for any other reason.

But nobody is counting the other side of the ledger. And no one is counting the positive effect of AI in helping Americans start small businesses of their own.

The statistics aren’t hard to find. Americans filed nearly 18% more new business applications in the first seven months of this year than in the same stretch of 2025. One in three laid-off Gen Z workers told Resume Genius they’re considering starting their own business.

But if the only number Washington tracks is layoffs, the only policy we’ll get is damage control. We’ll see new rules written to protect the companies that already exist.

I’m an entrepreneur who has started several businesses. And before AI, it was much harder.

Launching a consumer product the traditional way can still cost $50,000 to $250,000 before the first sale. Most ideas die at the first factory quote. The ones that survive usually have money behind them.

Think about who that leaves out. The home cook whose hot sauce the whole block asks for. The nurse who knows exactly what’s missing from every hospital gift shop. The laid-off product manager who has been sketching the same brand in a notebook for five years.

Most of them will never find out if they were right. A good idea shouldn’t need a trust fund to get a fair shot.

Now I’m watching that equation flip.

AI is helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, inventors and adventurers start their own businesses — at a fraction of the cost and incredibly quickly.

AI doesn’t do it all. It makes the first draft of a design. An engineer and a factory still make the product.

But the gate in front of the factory is coming down.

That leaves two possible futures, and both are already underway.

In one, AI helps established players like Amazon, Walmart and Google do more with fewer people.

Productivity soars, profits accumulate among the richest, and the rest of us become better-equipped employees. Or we are laid off and hope for a basic income grant of some kind.

In the other future, AI lowers the cost of expertise so far that one person with an idea can do what used to take a design firm, a factory relationship, a marketing agency and a warehouse to achieve.

Getting there doesn’t require Congress to pick winners. It requires three things policymakers aren’t doing yet.

First, count the owners, not just the layoffs. The Census Bureau already tracks new business applications every month, but nobody asks how many were built with AI or started by someone that AI pushed out of a job. If lawmakers want companies to report the jobs AI eliminates, they should be just as curious about the businesses it creates.

Second, keep rules written for frontier AI labs from landing on a founder working from her kitchen table. Compliance costs that a trillion-dollar company barely notices can end a small business before its first sale.

Third, treat small-dollar capital as infrastructure. A financing system built around big loans and venture rounds makes no sense for a business that launches on a few hundred dollars.

There’s an opportunity lawmakers keep missing, too. Reshoring — bringing American manufacturing home from overseas — won’t only come from tariffs and giant plants. It can come from thousands of tiny brands that each need a manufacturer within driving distance.

We can keep counting only what AI takes from people. Or we can start counting what it lets them own.

I know which number the person with a few hundred dollars and an idea is hoping we’ll count. Washington should start counting it too.

Faheem Kajee, a serial entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of Dough.

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