Note: This graphic illustrates the process of job creation by firm startups, but not actual job creation over any specific time period, which varies each year. The average levels of initial startup job creation, job destruction from failure, and expansion of surviving firms were characteristic of the 1992-2011 period, as reported in Ryan Decker, John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda, “The Role of Entrepreneurship in US Job Creation and Economic Dynamism,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2014.

The graphic was inspired by Figure 3 in Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky, “Neutralism and Entrepreneurship: The Structural Dynamics of Startups, Young Firms, and Job Creation,” Kauffman Foundation Research Series on Firm Formation and Economic Growth, September 2010.