How Many Fortune 500 Companies Were Started During A Recession?

That's the question that drives a new research paper (The Economic Future Just Happened) from the Kauffman Foundation, written by Growthology blogger Dane Stangler. Dane finds that about half of future Fortune 500 companies were founded during a recession. As he writes:

This, in and of itself, is remarkable. But it also turns out that the Fortune figure, when broken down by decade and when looked at in the context of recent Census papers that Kauffman has helped fund, fits neatly into a narrative of the American economy moving from the bureaucratic capitalism of Galbraith's New Industrial state to the entrepreneurial capitalism of the past two or three decades (and the entrepreneurial capitalism of a prior era). The composition of the companies on the Fortune list is rather dynamic (surprisingly, I think), but even more importantly, startups have been enormously important in terms of job creation. Without startups, we would have had only a handful of years in which overall net job creation in the economy was positive.

You can find additional coverage at RealClearPolitics, which is teaming with Kauffman to cover entrepreneurship.