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This article originally appeared in my regular column at Forbes.com here.

Contributor Alan Hall (investor, entrepreneur and author) famously addressed the national trend toward entrepreneurship in his article Kiss Your Boss Goodbye. It’s Time to Be An Entrepreneur. Clearly he’s hit a hot button (or perhaps a resonant chord?) If you missed that article, you can find it here.

Given the level of interest, I’d like to take a closer look at those who are taking the plunge. I spoke with Jack Sunderlage, Executive Vice President of National Sales for Grow America, the company Alan Hall has founded and is expanding with the help of national sponsors to support entrepreneurs.

Jack is a highly accomplished executive who has held key roles in companies ranging from Burroughs, UNISYS, Digital Equipment, Compaq Computer, and Hewlett-Packard to ContentWatch, the company that produces Net Nanny. (Among many other recognitions, in 2010 he was named International Executive of the Year by the World Trade Center Utah and the World Trade Association of Utah.)

Here’s what Jack had to say about the current entrepreneurial trend, based on calculations and information he’s gathered from the Kauffman Foundation. As of March 2011, there are an average of 320 new businesses launched every month, for every 100,000 U.S. adults.

That equates to 543,000 new U.S. companies every month. (We can’t annualize this number by simply multiplying by 12, Kauffman notes, since some entrepreneurs are in and out of multiple businesses during that time. However, multiple estimates put the total number of U.S. entrepreneurs at 11.5 million, in sum.)

Jack’s data confirms several additional phenomena as well:…

To continue reading please visit my Forbes column.