State ranks 27th in startup activity.
Main Street businesses—in Missouri and nationwide—made a comeback in 2015, according to a recent report from the Kauffman Foundation.
The 2015 Kauffman Main Street Entrepreneurship Index analyzed small business activity in two ways: the percentage of business owners in the overall population and the ratio of established small businesses divided by an area’s total population. And in all but one state, as well as 38 of the 40 largest metropolitan areas, the Kauffman Index found small business activity to be on the rise in 2015.
Missouri ranked 27th in startup activity and 8th in main street entrepreneurship (established businesses) among larger states. Of the total state population, 6.12 percent own a business as their main job, and there are 1,054.2 established small businesses—companies older than five years employing fewer than 50 people—per 100,000 residents.
St. Louis and Kansas City, two of the metro areas studied, also experienced an increase in small business activity in 2015. For startup activity, St. Louis ranked 38th and Kansas City ranked 29th. In terms of established business activity, St. Louis ranked 16th and Kansas City ranked 19th.
“Following a post-recession downward and stagnant trend in small business activity, we’re now seeing Main Street Entrepreneurship begin to rise,” E.J. Reedy, director of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation, says in the report’s news release. “This obviously is good news given that these small businesses make up 63 percent of all employer firms nationally.”
The full report is available here.
