How many micros in 2007? Waiting for numbers ain’t easy

Posted on | May 7, 2009 | 2 Comments

The Kauffman Foundation has a new report out — well, relatively new. The report was released last week and I was planning to tell you about it last week, too, but I was MIA on unscheduled medical leave.

So, yeah … said research is latest Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, which shows that said entrepreneurial activity rose slightly from 2007 to 2008. No surprises there, I’m only a bit astonished that the rise was so small, only 0.02%.

Then again, I expect the recession bounce in new businesses will actually happen when we look back on this year and maybe next year, too. It usually takes awhile for people who’ve lost their job to realize that they aren’t finding a new one fast enough to keep the wolf from the door. Here’s what Kauffman has to say about that:

However, it’s likely that “necessity entrepreneurs” are responsible for at least a portion of the increase–which makes sense with unemployment figures climbing. The report shows that while entrepreneurship rates increased for the lowest-income-potential and middle-income-potential types of businesses, it decreased for the highest-income-potential types of businesses.

Kauffman, like my old friend Dr. Scott Shane, has little interest in the microbusiness as microbusiness and believes that small firms are only worthy of notice if they are (or have the potential to become) fast-growth gazelles that generate bucketloads of money with concurrent bucketloads of jobs.

I’m sure they don’t mean to be complete snobs. I bet they’re all very nice if you meet them “in real life.”

We’re expecting the 2007 nonemployer data from the Census Bureau to be released in about three months, which seems like a really long time to have to wait. I have a feeling that nonemployer growth in 2007 will settle back into the 2-3% range that is “normal” for annual firm population growth, and will spike again when we got the numbers for 2008 or maybe 2009.

Data lags. They force me to develop patience, and that is good for me. (Maybe, if I keep repeating it, I’ll refrain from chewing on my desk while I wait … )

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