The Kauffman Index 2015: Startup Activity | Metropolitan Area and City Trends

Abstract

The Kauffman Index: Startup Activity is a novel early indicator of new business creation in the United States, integrating several high-quality sources of timely entrepreneurship information into one composite indicator of startup activity. The Index captures business activity in all industries, and is based on both a nationally representative sample size of more than a half million observations each year and on the universe of all employer businesses in the United States. This allows us to look at both entrepreneurs and the startups they create. This report presents trends in startup activity for the forty largest metropolitan areas in the United States by population. Broad-based entrepreneurship in America appears to be slowly crawling its way out of the depths it has been stuck in since 2010. Startup activity rose in 2015, reversing a five-year downward trend in the United States, giving rise to hope for a revival of entrepreneurship. However, the return remains tepid and well below historical trends, as demonstrated in this paper. A principle driver of this year’s uptick is the growth of male opportunity entrepreneurship, accompanied by the continued strength of immigrant entrepreneurship - covered in the Kauffman Index: Startup Activity | National Trends. Males were hit particularly hard during the Great Recession. State stars of the startup surge include perennial favorites like Colorado and Florida, as well as some less-highlighted places, such as Montana and Wyoming - covered in the Kauffman Index: Startup Activity | State Trends.In this report, we focus on startup activity at the metropolitan and city area.