Saturday, October 20, 2007
A Reminder of the Role of SME's in Job Creation
On this blog and elsewhere, I have hammered away at the importance of the small and medium enterprise sector in job creation and employment, especially in fast-growing developing countries. A large proportion of new job creation in developed countries (let alone developing ones) has been in the SME sector. I was reminded of just how large this number is while reading the innovation special in the last issue of the Economist.
From 1980 to 2001, all of the net growth in American employment came from firms younger than five years old. Established firms lost many jobs over that period and dozens fell off the Fortune 500 list.
