Kauffman: Entrepreneurial Activity At 14-Year High
Jun 21st, 2010 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: ResearchThanks to the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau is just a little busy this year, we won’t be seeing the firm size class numbers for 2007 until later this month. Almost on the heels of that release, somewhere in the middle of the demographics data from the 2007 Economic Census, the 2008 nonemployer numbers will be released. Among all the data, one of the expectations is that we will begin seeing the results of the Great Recession on the business population. Most of us are expecting a pretty significant spike in the number of nonemployer firms started in 2008 and 2009.
As it happens, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity has already found that to be the case. Since the Index measures new business creation at the individual business owner level, it captures most new nonemployer firms as well as employers (it’s measure of “significant business activity” being 15 hours per week). What Kauffman found was that about 558,000 new firms were started per month in 2009. The researchers had no way to separate out what they call “high potential” entrepreneurial endeavors from the efforts of the desperate and unemployed but the degree to which that matters depends on who you talk to, doesn’t it?
