Where Are the Start-Ups? Loss of Dynamism Is Impeding Growth<br />Start-up and shutdown rates among<br />all United States companies<br />Companies starting up<br />Companies shutting down<br />Start-ups as a share of all companies<br />The evidence paints a distinct picture of decline: Fewer start-ups mean fewer new ideas<br />and fewer young, productive businesses to replace older, less productive ones.<br />The pattern is particularly striking in the United States, where the share of adults with a job remains well below its peak at the end of the 20th century,<br />and productivity growth has trundled along over the last decade at the slowest pace since the end of World War II.<br />Most notably, the economy’s ability to generate and support new businesses — agents of creative destruction<br />that bring new products and methods into the marketplace — appears to be faltering across the world.<br />But labor market fluidity — job switching, creation and destruction — has been declining since the 1980s.<br />Researchers have found that the decline in companies entering the market since 1980 has trimmed productivity growth by about 3.1 percent.
