The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Hunting for Gazelles
Joshua Zumbrun
30/10/2009
Part of the reason for gloomy talk of a jobless recovery is that small businesses–the greatest generator of new jobs, says conventional wisdom–have taken a pounding. In the recession of 2001 companies with fewer than 100 employees accounted for 19% of the 4 million jobs that disappeared. This time it’s worse. Through the fourth quarter of 2008 small firms accounted for 48% of job losses. (Since the start of the recession a total 7.8 million jobs have disappeared.) Such outfits may have a tougher time recovering, since no loan officer in his right mind would return their calls.
Suppose conventional wisdom is wrong?
The idea that small businesses create most new employment derives from The Job Generation Process (1979) by economist David Birch. In 1994, however, Birch revised his thesis, isolating job-creating companies he called “gazelles.” Characterized less by size than by rapid expansion, Birch defined the species as enterprises whose sales doubled every four years. By his estimates, these firms, roughly 4% of all U.S. companies, were responsible for 70% of all new jobs. The gazelles beat out the elephants (like Wal-Mart ) and the mice (corner barbershops).
Unsurprisingly, gazelles are rare creatures. A 2008 study by Zoltan Acs, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Public Policy at George Mason University, found that a mere 2% to 3% of all companies were high-impact firms. Elephants and mice cut jobs, and the deeper they slice the higher unemployment rises. But when it comes to job creation, they are almost irrelevant.
Unlike mice and elephants, gazelles are tricky to spot. On average, high-impact firms are 25 years old, says Acs, and they’re not gazelles for life. “You find them in all industries and [they change] over time,” he says. In the 1990s a disproportionate number of gazelles were technology firms; in this decade many were in housing-related services, says Acs. “Where this is going to take off next, I don’t know,” Acs continues. But he’s sure there will be a new explosion of high-impact businesses.
Gazelles have certainly been hurt in the recession. But Acs thinks many are still growing, and believes they’ll be the first to start hiring again. Why? Because they are the economy’s most productive enterprises. High-impact firms have greater revenue per employee than other companies in all size categories and maintain that edge in times of prosperity and downturn. This recession has seen a dramatic surge in productivity (see chart in “Look Who’s Hiring Now”)–good breeding ground for tomorrow’s gazelles and a turnaround in the bleak employment picture.
One other myth to pop: that gazelles are starved of capital. While it’s true that a lot of small businesses have had trouble getting loans, “We are really overplaying the ‘Gee, credit’s not available’ story,” says William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business in Washington, D.C. According to the NFIB’s September survey, 33% of its members say they’re borrowing on a regular basis–about on a par with the post-1983 period, says Dunkelberg. (The Obama Administration recently announced plans to let small banks borrow–and presumably lend–at lower rates.) More strikingly, only 4% of surveyed firms cite financing as their chief problem. Their biggest gripes: poor sales (32%) and taxes (24%). “Why buy a new truck if you have nobody to deliver to?” asks Dunkelberg.
Gazelles may not be knocking on bankers’ doors much, but historically they’re good credit risks. In Acs’ study, in the four years after their growth phase, only 3% or so of the gazelle population died; the rest kept expanding or at least survived. “It’s all about confidence and overcoming uncertainties,” says Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. Chief among their concerns are the potential costs of health care reform–and the lingering question of tax credits for job creation. It’s not certain that either will see resolution before the end of the year.
The lingering wreckage may create opportunities for survivors. “If someone goes out of business, you’re going to pick up some of the pieces,” says Acs. If enough gazelles see it that way, the recovery might not be so jobless after all.
Source:http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/careers-small-businesses-unemployment-hunting-for-gazelles.html
Middle management in gazelle organizations
March 29th, 2015
by Bob Morris
While completing the process of evaluating workshops and seminars I conducted in 2014, I have also been scheduling and conducting additional ones in 2015. Most of my involvement is with gazelles, a majority of them companies in which venture capital firms have made a substantial investment. In that event, the VC firms are my clients and companies in their portfolios are either gazelles or potential gazelles.
As you may know already, the term “gazelle” was coined by the economist David Birch. His identification of gazelle companies followed from his 1979 report titled “The Job Generation Process” (MIT Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change), wherein he identified small companies as the biggest creators of new jobs in the economy.
In 1994, however, Birch revised his thesis, isolating job-creating companies he called “gazelles.” Characterized less by size than by rapid expansion, Birch defined the species as enterprises whose sales doubled every four years. By his estimates, these firms, roughly 4% of all U.S. companies, were responsible for 70% of all new jobs. The gazelles beat out the elephants (like Walmart) and the mice (corner barbershops). When you hear politicians say, “Small businesses create most of the new jobs,” they’re really talking about young and growing firms. They are talking about gazelles.
These are among the challenges that the leaders in a gazelle company now face:
1. How to manage rapid growth
2. How to retain the given company’s structural integrity (i.e. flawless operations)
3. How to make sound business decisions faster, especially when faced with an unexpected development
4. How to increase the capabilities of direct reports who must grow as their company grows
5. Meanwhile, how to avoid organizational burnout of people, systems, cash…enthusiasm.
Middle managers bear the brunt of coping with these challenges. They are seldom in the C-Suite, spending most of their time in the proverbial “tenches,” getting “dirt under their nails, “going the extra mile,” etc.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of middle managers in gazelle organizations. They must both lead and follow effectively at all levels and in all areas. If your organization needs assistance with accelerating the development of middle managers, please contact me.
Tags: "The Job Generation Process", How to avoid organizational burnout of people [comma] systems [comma] cash [comma] enthusiasm, How to increase the capabilities of direct reports who must grow as their company grows, How to make sound business decisions faster [comma] especially when faced with an unexpected development, How to manage rapid growth, How to retain the given company's structural integrity, Middle management in gazelle organizations, MIT Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change, the term “gazelle” was coined by the economist David Birch
Source: http://bobmorris.biz/middle-management-in-gazelle-organizations
Are Small Businesses the Biggest Producers of Jobs?
Kevin L. Kliesen , Julia S. Maues
It is often claimed that small firms are responsible for a disproportionately large share of new jobs that are created in the U.S. economy. If true, this speaks well of the entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S. economy, whereby newcomers introduce new ideas or production processes that lead to new and improved products or services. The rise of global companies like Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Google from small beginnings is a testament to the importance of small businesses and the economic forces they sometimes unleash. However, the claim that small businesses generate a large percentage of new jobs must be evaluated carefully. First, there isn't a universal agreement on the definition of a small business. Furthermore, the failure rates of small business are quite high. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about half of the businesses that opened in 1994 were still operating five years later. Thus, when one accounts for job destruction, small businesses appear to account for a significantly smaller share of net new jobs created in the private sector than many people might believe.
What Do Past Studies Reveal?
The importance of small businesses to job creation has been part of the economic policy narrative for some time. In 1979, then-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor David Birch claimed that firms with 20 or fewer employees accounted for two-thirds of all new jobs created between 1969 and 1976; firms with 100 or fewer employees accounted for 82 percent of all new jobs created. Conversely, he found that large firms (500 or more employees) accounted for only 15 percent of net job growth. Birch's finding challenged the conventional wisdom about job creation at the time and, accordingly, had enormous influence on policymakers and researchers.1
Some economists soon began to challenge Birch's findings. Using the same data as Birch, Catherine Armington and Marjorie Odle found in 1982 that businesses with 100 or fewer employees accounted for only 39 percent of net new jobs. Several years later, Charles Brown, James Hamilton and James Meddoff pointed out that 40 percent of jobs created in small businesses in 1980 no longer existed in 1986. A more up-to-date assessment of the job-creation characteristic of small businesses can be found in work published by Stephen Davis, John Haltiwanger and Scott Schuh in 1996.
These authors noted that "a common confusion between net and gross job creation distorts the overall job creation picture and hides the enormous number of new jobs created by large employers."2 The authors found that although gross job creation is high for smaller firms (100 or fewer employees), so is job destruction. Slowly, researchers were coming to the conclusion that small businesses did create a lot of new jobs, but the high failure rate of these businesses suggested that their net job creation was much lower.
Earlier this year, a study designed to look at the entire economy was published.3 The researchers found that small firms create more net jobs than do large firms, which is consistent with the conventional wisdom but generally not the thrust of past research. However, they concede that Birch overestimated the importance of small business in job creation and found that there is a much smaller difference between the net number of new jobs created by large firms and small firms than Birch originally suggested.
Business Employment Dynamics
Researchers who want to assess the claim that small businesses account for a disproportionate percentage of new jobs must first confront several issues. First, what is the best data source for the hypothesis to be tested? Second, how should a small business be defined? (The Small Business Administration says a business is small if it employs fewer than 500 people. However, it may not be wise to lump together a Silicon Valley startup with a relatively large, established manufacturer.) Third, should the focus be on the gross number of jobs created or the net number of jobs created? The research suggests the latter. Why? Because even during the depths of the 2007-09 recession, businesses were still adding an average of nearly 800,000 new jobs a month. But they were shedding an even larger number of jobs per month—about 971,000.
In this article, we use the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) dataset from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.4 One drawback of the BED is that it has less than 20 years of history, which may limit the ability to draw firm conclusions. The analysis in this article uses the following breakdown of firm size: 1-19 employees; 20-99 employees; 100-499 employees; and 500 or more employees.
Job Gains by Firm Size
The table shows average gross and net job gains at all private business establishments from the third quarter of 1992 through the first quarter of 2010.5 Over this roughly 18-year period, gross job gains per quarter averaged a little less than 2.8 million, or about 929,000 per month. Since the 2007-2009 recession was extremely severe, the table includes a separate column that excludes the data from that period. The lower half of the table shows that businesses with fewer than 20 employees provided the largest percentage of gross job gains (about 30 percent). Businesses with between 20 and 99 employees accounted for the next largest share (about 27 percent), with the largest firms (500 or more) accounting for a somewhat smaller percentage (about 26 percent). The remaining category—businesses with between 100 and 499 employees—accounted for a smaller percentage of gross job gains. All of these percentages are little-changed if we exclude the recession period.
Gross and Net Job Gains by Firm Size
Average job gains (in thousands) per quarter, 1992:Q3 to 2010:Q1
Gross Job Gains
Net Job Gains
Size
Total Sample Period
Excluding 2007-09 Recession
Total Sample Period
Excluding 2007-09 Recession
1 to 19
821
828
16
28
20 to 99
747
758
25
40
100 to 499
496
505
25
37
500 or more
722
739
40
68
TOTAL
2,787
2,831
105
173
Percent of Total
1 to 19
29.5%
29.3%
15.0%
16.1%
20 to 99
26.8%
26.8%
23.6%
23.1%
100 to 499
17.8%
17.8%
23.4%
21.3%
500 or more
25.9%
26.1%
37.9%
39.4%
TOTAL
100.0%
100.0%
100.0%
100.0%
SOURCE: Authors' calculations based on Bureau of Labor Statistics' Business Employment Dynamics dataset. Some percentages do not total 100 due to rounding.
The analysis in the table seems consistent with the conventional wisdom that small businesses are the largest source of job creation in the economy. However, as suggested by previous studies, the conclusion tends to change when the focus switches to net job creation.
The two right-hand columns in the table examine net job gains. Net job gains are defined as job gains minus job losses. Three findings are apparent from the table. First, net job gains were significantly smaller than gross job gains. The net gains per quarter averaged only 105,000, or 35,000 per month. Second, the table shows that the recession dramatically reduced the rate of net job creation. Once net job losses during the recession are removed from the calculation, the number of net jobs rose to 173,000 per quarter (about 58,000 per month). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the BED data show that since 1992, net job creation tended to be largest among the largest firms: These firms accounted for about 38 percent of the total. The smallest firms showed the smallest percentage of net jobs created. This result does not change if the past recession is excluded from the sample.
In short, small businesses showed higher rates of gross job creation, but they also exhibited high rates of job destruction. Looked at from this standpoint, net job creation matters most.
Linpeng Zheng provided research assistance.
Endnotes
Birch followed up his original study with several subsequent studies (not cited herein). [back to text]
One drawback of this study is that it focused on the manufacturing sector, which is a relatively small share of the economy and, thus, probably not a good representation of total job creation. [back to text]
See Neumark, Wall and Zhang. [back to text]
The BED is a quarterly series that is based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which uses state unemployment insurance records. See Spletzer et al. for more information about the BED. [back to text]
Changes in employment can arise from opening or expanding businesses, or closing or contracting businesses. Gross job gains include the sum of all jobs added at both opening and at expanding establishments. Gross job losses, then, include the sum of all jobs lost at both closing establishments or contracting establishments. [back to text]
References
Armington, Catherine; and Odle, Marjorie. "Small Business: How Many Jobs?" The Brookings Review, Winter 1982, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 14-17.
Birch, David L. The Job Generation Process. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change, 1979.
Brown, Charles; Hamilton, James; and Medoff, James. Employers Large and Small. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Davis, Stephen J.; Haltiwanger, John C.; and Schuh, Scott. Job Creation and Destruction. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996.
Haltiwanger, John .C.; Jarmin, Ron C.; and Miranda, Javier. "Who Creates Jobs? Small vs. Large vs. Young." NBER Working Paper 16300, August 2010. See www.nber.org/papers/w16300
Neumark, David; Wall, Brandon; and Zhang, Junfu. "Do Small Businesses Create More Jobs? New Evidence for the United States from the National Establishment Time Series." The Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2011, Vol. 93, No. 1, pp. 16-29.
Spletzer, James R.; Faberman, R. Jason; Sadeghi, Akbar; Talan, David M.; and Clayton, Richard L. "Business Employment Dynamics: New Data on Gross Job Gains and Losses." Monthly Labor Review, April 2004, pp. 29-42.
Source: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-2011/are-small-businesses-the-biggest-producers-of-jobs
