"The Collapse of Startups in Job Creation"

Tim Kane for the Hudson Institute. Discouraging. Three samples:

"Since 1977, newly born companies usually create a net 3 million jobs per year, but the most recently released data report as falling to 2.34 million in the year 2010. The Commerce Department will not release annual 2011 or 2012 data until after the election, but we can see that quarterly figures for startup job creation have continued to weaken."

"The average rate for entrepreneurial job creation under the previous three presidents was 11.3, 11.2, and 10.8 [in new U.S. companies per capita] respectively, but under President Obama it has been cut by one-third to 7.8."

"While this report documents a disturbing weakness in startup job creation, it does not explain the cause of decline. There is anecdotal evidence that the U.S. policy environment has become inadvertently hostile to entrepreneurial employment. At the federal level, high taxes and higher uncertainty about taxes are undoubtedly inhibiting entrepreneurship, but to what degree is unknown. The dominant factor may be new regulations on labor."

Comments

[JorgXMckie]

We'd better hope it's only "inadvertently hostile". The other choice is much worse [and not, I believe, all that unlikely].

[kyle8]

Regulations, more than any tax policy are the culprit. All you have to do to verify this is talk to any small businessperson.