LegalZoom’s top five areas of incorporation, he says, are real estate, consulting, Internet (including electronic commerce), retail, and construction and contractors.

Image Lynn Zuckerman Gray, at a meeting in a park in New York, lost her job and started a recruiting company called Campus Scout. Credit... Ruby Washington/The New York Times

To be sure, a vast majority of corporate workers who have been laid off since December 2007 have sought another corporate job. After all, starting a business in the worst downturn in decades seems especially risky. Only two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, according to the Small Business Administration. That survival rate falls to 44 percent at four years, and to 31 percent at seven.

The silver lining may be that the survival rate is about the same in expansions and recessions, says Dane Stangler, senior analyst at Kauffman.

WHILE the Internet has made the formation process quick and inexpensive  papers can be filed with LegalZoom, for example, for $149 in addition to state filing fees  the costs of owning a business add up quickly. There are state and local taxes and fees, insurance, salaries and contract pay, overhead, inventory and the like. And these days, lenders are none too generous when it comes to forking over money to new businesses.

These factors, combined with the lack of a steady paycheck, often-inadequate health insurance and the sheer emotional stress of being unemployed, may prevent many people from setting out on their own.

But research on what is known as post-traumatic growth has found that some people become more resilient when faced with adversity, says Shawn Achor, a Harvard researcher. Creativity surges, he says, as they adapt to a new situation.