The urban exodus isn’t Americans’ only Biblical journey of late. As it turns out, unusually high numbers of Americans have also left traditional jobs since the beginning of the pandemic, either to stay home or to strike out on their own as entrepreneurs—an employee exodus, if you will.

It seems that every time the market goes kaput, the people respond by leaving traditional employment. The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic to 9.44 million, Labor Department data show, the highest total since 2008—save this past July, when it hit 9.5 million. In September alone, workers resigned from a record 4.4 million jobs, a 3 percent share of overall employment. And while the projected number of job openings for November was 11.2 million, the number of unemployed Americans seeking a job was only 7.4 million.

Of course, some of these people started working for themselves because they had no other option—they’d lost a job or were furloughed too many times for their old job to be considered reliable employment. But as we approach the two year mark of this season of extremes, in which half the working population is paid to Zoom, while the other half was either laid off early, worked grueling hours for companies that couldn’t hire more labor, or will face termination if they don’t get the vaccine, it shouldn’t surprise us that so many have said “enough.”

To which I say “good.” More Americans being self-employed, starting small businesses, and in general drawing away from impersonal corporate conglomerates and toward the people in their own immediate communities is something to celebrate. Whether this shift promises a more vibrant Main Street, growing the new working class party, and teaching citizens the virtues of self-government—or just 500,000 fewer bricks in the wall—it’s a good place to start.

Nobody said an exodus was easy, and the 21st century American man hardly cuts a Mosaic figure.

In many ways, these entrepreneurial Americans have a harder task ahead than anything the cubicle world can offer them. There are all the ordinary legal and licensing hurdles that must be jumped before you can begin practicing far too many occupations, not to mention the burdensome reality that is funding your own benefits without the help of a company plan. Then there are the startup costs, the high risk of failure, and all the other challenges that working for yourself typically entails. Compounding these are the struggles of the last two years—tight incomes, inflation, and a volatile market—which, true, confront everyone, but the self-employed especially, as the small business owner is his own emergency fund.

Small businesses died in 2020—countless of them. I saw this secondhand as my father, a self-employed lawyer in the entertainment business, went from writing artist contracts to helping his friends apply for PPP loans after the music industry ground to a halt overnight. There was nothing else to do; there was no work. Countless family friends lost everything. So, you might ask, isn’t it a bad time to strike out on your own? Yes, maybe. But it’s always hard. I could walk you down the street of my favorite town in southern Michigan and point out all the scars of the last two years, the movie theatre that almost didn’t make it and the best burger in town that is no more, and blame these things on the pandemic, but some of them wouldn’t have made it even without lockdowns. It just comes with the territory.

And yet, the game has changed. Self-employment, and all the flexibility it offers, has always been more appealing, but it used to be harder. Now, you can set up an Etsy shop, start a YouTube channel, or sell something on Instagram or Poshmark. These hybrid employment options were doing well before 2020, but they flourished under lockdown and increased screen time. Add to that the freedom to choose whether or not you’ll get vaccinated, work from home and take care of the kids instead of putting them in germ-ridden (or mask-maniacal) childcare, and retain all the flexibility of the early lockdowns yet without all the mandatory Zoom calls, and suddenly, everyone you know is “self-employed.”

The real question: How many of these entrepreneurial Americans are just selling pirated T-shirt designs on RedBubble? In other words, is it an enduring change, or just a blip? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, examine the root causes. For one, the fact that many of these small businesses started off as “side hustles,” meaning many 9-to-5 jobs weren’t actually filling every hour between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Surprise. For another, people are taking serious pay cuts to work for themselves. These are two sides of the same coin, I believe.

We are human beings, and as such, we want rewarding work—we want to see ourselves in what we produce. Sociologists call this the “IKEA effect,” except it predates IKEA and sociology and is not exactly a revolutionary idea. Man is a suzerain of the Creator, called to participate in the ongoing project of creation. That means we get to put our name on the painting. Except, in most modern jobs, man has no avenue to see the fruits of his labor, to see the image of the creator in the created; instead, he gets bureaucracies and committees and boards, which serve to remove him from the product of his labor. Especially at a large business, work is also often devoid of a sense of urgency: a simple task can languish between the channels of the media team, the legal team, the research team, until its original purpose is long dead. Self-employment, at its best, offers a return to work as man the creator, and to the vital urgency of life—serving clients who need help now, not exclusively during work hours.

There will always be those who just want the flexibility to live a Marcusian dream in which one’s work life is subject to, and homogeneously entwined with, one’s play life. Many Americans, particularly those in generation Z, are indeed in search of that very life, and succeeding at it. These kids are making a living without ever creating a C.V., interviewing, or stepping foot into an office with a dress code. It doesn’t come with health care benefits, but it comes with scores of social and personal ones for those who succeed at it. It’s the kind of job that only exists in a thoroughly modern world.

These aren’t the real entrepreneurs. These are the system-gamers.

The real entrepreneurs, like the real conservatives, will always be few. But their effect can be significant. We’re a nation of soft hands, but we can harden them if we’ll pick up the tools. For those who have pulled out of a big business to start small again, glory—and callouses—await.