New Zealand, Iceland and the United Kingdom have the highest rates of new start-ups among OECD countries, followed by Canada and Estonia. The United States ranks 23rd out of the 34 OECD countries, just above the Czech Republic and Chile. As of late 2011, though, some countries that normally have high rates of start-ups were experiencing a decline. For instance, the rate of start-ups in Spain dropped by almost half from May 2007 to May 2009 before rising slightly in late 2010, and the rate of start-ups in the U.K., Denmark, Germany and Italy all dropped toward the end of 2011.

More facts about start-ups:

• In the U.S., new start-ups are responsible for adding about 3 million jobs in their first year. Existing companies were losing about a million jobs annually in the late 2000s.


• The older a firm is, the fewer jobs it tends to create. In the U.S., one-year-old companies create about 1 million jobs per year, and 10-year-old businesses create about 300,000 per year.


• Despite the United States' comparatively low start-up rate, the rate of start-ups in the U.S. in 2010 was the highest it had been since 1995.

Follow wiseGEEK:

 

Discuss this Article

Post your comments

Post Anonymously

please enter the following code:

Login

username
password
forgot password?

or connect with facebook

Register

username
password
confirm
email