We (and I mean the big we, not just Kauffman) are obsessed with jobs right now, and rightfully so.  While the economy appears to be turning a corner, unemployment continues at stubbornly high rates.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should be out with updated unemployment statistics within the next few days but several private sector reports on jobs came through more positive (see Wall Street Journal article for a good summary of these statistics). 

At Kauffman, we have been digging into jobs data over the last couple of months thanks to some special tabulations from the Census Bureau.  Today, Kauffman released the first white paper in a series which will attempt to make sense of these tabulations as well as a host of other data becoming available from BLS, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Eurostat.  The current paper attempts to make the point that young firms (many of which are small) not just small businesses, generally, are the most active net job creators in the United States.  Haltiwanger, Jarmin, and Miranda find similar things in a working paper analysis using similar data sources.