Another fallacy and myth dispelled. While many a pundit tries to deny the jobs crisis by claiming lost jobs push people into entrepreneurship, the Cleveland Federal Reserve says otherwise:
A press release announcing a recent report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, for example, went so far as to argue, “Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment, 2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years—even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999–2000 technology boom.”
Unfortunately, a careful look at the data suggests otherwise. Multiple sources of government and private data show that the Great Recession was actually a time of considerable decline in entrepreneurial activity in the United States.
