• Early Stage Entrepreneurship
  • State Report

2021 State Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States

This report presents state trends in early-stage entrepreneurship in the United States, including all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Published: April 2022

Author: Robert Fairlie, professor, University of California, Santa Cruz; consultant, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Suggested citation: Fairlie, Robert (2022) State Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2021, Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation: Kansas City.

This is a report published by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation utilizing content and data from multiple sources and external contributors. Every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained in this report, and it is believed to be correct as of the publication date. Nonetheless, this material is for informational purposes, and you are solely responsible for validating the applicability and accuracy of the information in any use you make of it.

The Kauffman Indicators of Early-Stage Entrepreneurship is a set of measures that represents new business creation in the United States, integrating several high-quality, timely sources of information on early-stage entrepreneurship.

This report presents four indicators tracking early-stage entrepreneurship for the years 1996–2021: rate of new entrepreneurs reflects the number of new entrepreneurs in a given month, opportunity share of new entrepreneurs is the percentage of new entrepreneurs who created their businesses out of opportunity instead of necessity, startup early job creation is the total number of jobs created by startups per capita, and startup early survival rate is the one-year average survival rate for new firms. State level trends are reported for all four indicators.

  • The rate of new entrepreneurs in 2021 ranged from a low of 0.17 percent in West Virginia to a high of 0.61 percent in Florida. The median for states in 2021 was 0.31 percent, reflecting 310 out of every 100,000 adults.
  • The opportunity share of new entrepreneurs ranged from a low of 65.1 percent in Michigan to a high of 93.1 percent in Arkansas, with a median of 79.1 percent.
  • Startup early job creation in Vermont was 2.5 jobs per 1,000 people, compared with 6.5 jobs per 1,000 people in Florida, and a median of 4.1.
  • Startup early survival rate ranged from 73.4 percent in Hawaii to 89.2 percent in Washington, with a median of 81.0 percent.
  • The overall KESE Index — an equally-weighted composite of the four indicators – ranged from -6.0 in Rhode Island to 8.8 in Florida, with a median of 0.6
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