About the Kauffman Indicators

The Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship present entrepreneurial trends in the United States across three indicator series – Early-Stage Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Jobs, and New Employer Businesses – and provide new data, innovative methods, reports, and visualizations annually.

The Early-Stage Entrepreneurship Series

The Kauffman Indicators of Early-Stage Entrepreneurship captures early-stage entrepreneurial activity, broadly defined. It includes four key early-stage measures:

The Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship (KESE) Index reflects early-stage entrepreneurial activity, broadly defined. It is an equally weighted index that is normalized based on the first two decades of available data (1995-2015). It tracks changes in entrepreneurial activity over time.

The Entrepreneurial Jobs Series

The Entrepreneurial Jobs series focuses on the quantity and quality of private sector jobs, allowing for comparisons by firm age and geography.

This series is comprised of four indicators: contribution, compensation, creation, and constancy.

The New Employer Businesses Series

The New Employer Businesses series provides information on new employer businesses. It measures trends in the emergence of these businesses and the time it takes these businesses to make a first payroll.

The New Employer Business series is comprised of four clear indicators: rate of new employer business actualizationrate of new employer businessesnew employer business velocity, and employer business newness – as well as the new employer business actualization speed [NEBAS] index.