High School Dropouts Start More Businesses Than High School Or College Graduates

Posted by Milton Recht:

From The New York Times, Economix Blog, "America’s Biggest Entrepreneurs: High School Dropouts" by Catherine Rampell:

But as it turns out, the country’s most frequent business founders are dropouts of a different kind: They dropped out of high school.

That’s according to the latest numbers from the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, as prepared by Robert W. Fairlie at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Fairlie looked at different demographic groups, and what share of each group started businesses in any given month (which is generally tiny, less than 1 percent for basically all major demographics). When he looked at entrepreneurship by educational attainment, he found that people who had not completed high school were most likely to start new businesses.

Source: The New York Times

***Starting a new business, by the way, does not necessarily mean taking on employees. The Labor Department survey upon which this analysis is based does not, unfortunately, currently include information on employer versus nonemployer businesses.