When jobs are being lost, a common reaction for some people is to go into business for themselves.

Small businesses are divided into "non-employer" businesses, which have no paid employees, and "employer" businesses, which do. When the economy gets in trouble, the number of non-employer firms often rises, while the number of employer businesses goes down, according to Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, in an article in the USA Today.

According to a CareerBuilder.com survey, with the unemployment rate at record highs, roughly a quarter of the workers who have not found jobs are considering starting a business.

Some of them may be inspired by the small-business financing plan Obama launched in March, which included reduced loan fees and incentives for banks to loan to small businesses. Since then, small business loans have increased, the USA Today reports that 234 lenders who had not made an SBA 7(a) loan since September had made such loans in March.

There are more than 27 million small businesses in the country, according to the article. Of these, about 75 percent are considered "non-employer" businesses; the other 25 percent are "employer" businesses.